Electronica

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MATTHEW HERBERT
Plat du Jour Accidental ***

When Matthew Herbert decided to make an album about the evils of the food industry, he took his sampler and went to visit a battery farm. There, he sampled the squawking of 30,000 chickens and the chirping of 24,000 just-born chicks, before going elsewhere to record the clucking of a few dozen free-range hens. Such samples turn up on The Truncated Life of a Modern Industrialised Chicken, a track where the ingredients are as essential as what the chef does with them. Throughout, Herbert turns unlikely samples (a chef eating pickles, splashes of bottled water and cans of Coca-Cola fizzing) into beautifully layered chimes, micro-grooves and all manner of rhythmic waves. But it's the bigger picture that Herbert wants you to concentrate on; the closing Nigella, George, Tony and Me - where he recreates the meal cooked by the domestic goddess for George Bush and Tony Blair and then rolls over it with a tank - is the epicurean clincher. www.magicandaccident.com