Published
Wed, Aug 12, 2015, 14:38
- "For my next record, I will write a description of the record rather than make the music itself."
Matthew Herbert next "album" will be a book in which the UK artist will "write a description of the record rather than make the music itself."
The album, titled The Music, will only exist as a book—no music will be produced. As Herbert explains: "Each chapter will describe in precise detail what sounds to use, how they should be organised and occasionally an approximation of what the net result should sound like. Crucially it must be able to be recorded for real given enough time, access and resources. However, I will never make the record. It will always just be a description of the music itself."
The UK experimental artist, who released an album as Herbert titled The Shakes back in June, says the book will look at the drastic changes in music production methods over the past 100 years. "I would like this book then to be a kind of manifesto for sound that makes this shift explicit," he says. "In that way there will be no musical instruments or lyrics described in the piece. Instead, we may read about the sound of Samantha Cameron rubbing suncream into David Cameron's back on holiday in Ibiza, mixed in to the sound of 21,000 taxi drivers turning off their engines at exactly the same time. It hopes to challenge how we think about music, sound and of course, how we hear the world itself."
There's a crowdfunding campaign in place to get the project off the ground. You can check it out here.