“When everything I read politically and watch and hear has been absorbed, there comes a point where
you must feel it viscerally otherwise you are closed to the horrors of it and thus closed to the possibility
of action, closed to the idea that you could make a difference or could have prevented the outcome.
This internalising of the struggle, the friction, the melancholy I feel should be at the emotional core of
the work. After all, I am making music and not writing a newspaper article. But with the invention of
the sampler, I can now explicitly root my work in the literal, critical present. I can describe the real in
the frame of the imaginary.”
For someone so uncompromising in his attitude towards music and its making, for someone so
unafraid to shun the sort of political engagement other, more timid artists consider a commercial turn-
off, Matthew Herbert has been extraordinarily successful in an extraordinary variety of fields. He is
both overall head and A&R man for Accidental Records, which he founded in 2000. He has also acted
as a producer for the label, working with, among others, the Mercury-nominated The Invisible on
their superb eponymous debut. His other productio...
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