Review: Matthew Herbert (Barbican, London, Sat 14th October 2023)

Review: Matthew Herbert at the Barbican, Sat 14th Oct. 

This concert divided opinion with my gig going companions!

I enjoyed it - I thought the dramatic climax of the piece where a re-animated horse emerged from the maelstrom of noise and light accompanied by a possessed and/or demonic dancer was genuinely thrilling. Put me in mind of Stravinski’s Rite of Spring (in a very good way!)

Some of my companions were less convinced, but that’s the beauty of art I guess!

I felt at the end of The Horse that I’d seen something interesting, and sincere, but that didn’t necessarily work in every respect, but when it did, I thought it a genuine thrill.

Sound On Sound review - March 2021

Sound On Sound is the bible of sound engineers, composers and electronic musicians everywhere, and so I was delighted to receive a really nice review for ‘Synthesizer Evolution: From Analogue to Digital (And Back)’ in the March 2021 issue (out now - digital or hard copy).

Check it out below!

Reproduced with permission.

Sound On Sound Website: https://www.soundonsound.com/

The Divine Comedy's Synth Song

I see the Divine Comedy have a written a silly song listing out a whole load of synthesizer names:

Not entirely sure what to make of it. My main thoughts are:

• All synths namechecked are on the Synth Poster except for some of the post-90’s workstations like the Korg Triton (cos they’re kinda boring)

• Musically it’s a bit of one-shot novelty song. All the silly kind of sounds that people used to think that the word ‘synthesizer’ represented and thus feels a bit dated. Perhaps that was the idea. Dunno. I don’t think it’s going on any of my Spotify playlists…

Let me know what you think of it!

Carl Craig @ The Barbican, 6th April

Billed as the Carl Craig Synthesizer Ensemble, I was not too disappointed with the set up - four keyboard players and piano. Carl was very chatty this evening and said that the synths in use were three Dave Smith Prophet 6’s and a Dave Smith Oberheim OB6. So, very definitely part of the current wave of sexy new analogue synths.

Before I review the gig, I know you synth fans will want to hear the jam session at the end where each keyboard player did a little solo in a very classic keyboard player style. Unfortunately missed the first guy, but got the other three and the pianist (Kelvin Sholar). Sorry about the visuals, I wasn’t really paying that much attention, more listening to the grooves!

The gig itself was very enjoyable; it’s always a bit weird hearing dance music in a classical music venue - it never quite feels right. Though the nature of tonight’s music was much more on the epic and symphonic scale - from the album Versus - so was less about the dance and more about the journey of the tracks. What also helped was the large back projection of Detroit cityscapes.

The visuals were immediately compelling - an orange circle with a black cross on it filled the screen at the start - an already pleasing geometric image. Then as the camera (drone!) rose up, it was revealed to be the top of some weird chimney in the middle of a Detroit intersection, with roads going everywhere, strange pedestrian raised tunnels and curves, and geometry everywhere. A very arresting and exciting sequence.

In fact nearly all the images of Detroit were epic and grand in some way - focussing largely on the tall buildings in what I assume is central Detroit. Craig was clearly trying to present a view of Detroit other than the ‘apocalypse porn’ we often see of the decaying buildings there, following the collapse of the car industry. And judging from what he himself said, he is definitely proud of his home town and wants to try and change the standard narrative we have.

And I think that worked. The music fit the visuals perfectly; frequently starting from a small repetitive phrases before building into huge, overwhelming climaxes, it felt to me  (nearly) like a Koyaanisqatsi for the 21st Century. The pieces started at night, moved from dawn and daytime before returning to sunset and night.

I think that feeling would have been intensified had Carl not done so much talking in-between tracks, but it was actually quite nice to go to an electronic music gig and hear something about the motive for writing the music, and some reminisces about previous times in London, etc.

And then to round things off, we had the jam / solo session as embedded above. And why not - after quite an intense hour of music it was fun to let off a bit of steam and enjoy a bit of unpretentious synth noodling!