Matthew Herbert, musician: “The dream of any creator is to come up with the idea that ignites a revolution.”

The last time Matthew Herbert (Kent, England, 53) set foot in Madrid, seven years ago, he did so by paralyzing Paseo de la Castellana and setting up a stage in Plaza de Colón, where he appeared surrounded by more than 50 local musicians, including his Brexit Big Band . It was an "apology" tour for England's exit from the European Union that took him across the continent, bringing together more than a thousand musicians. This time, however, he was accompanied only by the young singer and percussionist Momoko, with whom he gave a concert in the intimacy of the courtyard of La Casa Encendida, using resources as simple as the percussive rhythm of a basketball bounce. He will release his next album with her on June 27th.

He had also planned to present it at Sónar in Barcelona , ​​until he joined the boycott of up to 40 artists who chose not to perform after it was revealed that the flagship electronic music festival belonged to the pro-Israeli investment fund KKR . When asked by email about his absence, he replied that it had been a difficult decision: "The people in charge of the festival are good friends and have consistently supported and encouraged my more political work for almost 30 years." And he referred to his brief statement , in which he insisted that "our priority is to do everything possible to end the genocide in Gaza and promote the creation of a Palestinian state and the end of the occupation." In his case, it makes perfect sense; Herbert is a musician whose creative core appeals to political awareness. Without going any further, he closed his concert at Electrónica in Madrid in April by unfurling a Palestinian flag.

Hours before that live performance, he laughed when we pointed out his alternation between monumental projects like that time he took over the capital's Plaza de Colón and simple electronic albums like the one he's now presenting with Momoko. "I guess it's one of my patterns: I get into a huge mess, the kind that sucks the life out of you; and then, exhausted, I think, 'Okay, now I'm going to make some little songs.' Call it a detox. I'm very cerebral, very much about trying to do the right thing, about seeking out politics with a capital P in my music, about speaking out, about wanting to provoke change, about exploring radical ways of doing so. That's why, sometimes, I have to give myself over to something that is purely and simply pleasurable." This musician, who has put together a concert sampling sounds from a cereal box or collaborated with Björk or Róisín Murphy, has accustomed us to constant surprises. For nearly three decades, he has been one of the most notable innovators in dance music that no one would dare play in clubs and experimental jazz that is still danceable.

In the last two years alone, he has recorded an orchestral album based on a horse skeleton, improvised with 20 musicians and provided live music for a football match, set the mood for Issey Miyake's Paris fashion shows, and composed a pair of soundtracks. One of them was for The Wave (2025), Sebastián Lelio's new film , a reflection of the feminist movement unleashed in Chilean universities following a rape case. Herbert has collaborated regularly with Lelio since they met on A Fantastic Woman (2017), a film that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and promoted trans visibility in Hollywood and promoted changes to trans laws in Chile.

“If art can contribute to changing things, count me in. It's like this current series, Adolescence, which is being shown in schools and has sparked a dialogue between its creators and the British government… That's every creator's dream: to come up with the idea that ignites a revolution. I always remember the mythology surrounding Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring . Legend has it that its premiere in Paris in 1913 sparked riots among the audience. We're talking about an instrumental piece. That's my great challenge as a composer: What instrumental piece could spark a revolt today?” he challenges himself.

In Chile, she has found a collaborative source. She is currently working on a performance by Chilean playwright Manuela Infante with forensic anthropologist Roberta Lobos, an expert in identifying the remains of victims of forced disappearances. "My work has been to translate the data collected by this researcher over decades into sound to denounce the historical neglect in Chile of bodies thrown into mass graves during the Pinochet dictatorship," she explains.

The sounds of death haunt Matthew Herbert. At least, creatively speaking. He has recorded the cackling of thousands of chickens on their way to slaughter, the complete life cycle of a pig (from farm to table), and an entire album from 10 seconds of bombing in Libya. He even recomposed Mahler's Tenth Symphony, which he left unfinished when he died, at the request of Deutsche Grammophon. 9/11 caught him a few blocks from the Twin Towers. He had a concert at the Knitting Factory in New York the next day. He thought everyone was going to die. Even so, he went up to the roof of his hotel and recorded everything. He would use it only once, years later, for a concert in Geneva. “Some people walked out of the room. I was surprised that, after having seen so many images of that tragic moment, hearing the Towers fall could be so offensive to someone. I understand there's a difference, but what is that difference? It's true that my work is full of sonic ghosts . A few years ago, I recorded in a crematorium. Your body is burned for an hour and a half, but some bones always remain. That's what goes through an ash mill, and those are the remains that are put into an urn to be given to loved ones. That 'clack, clack, clack' is one of the most chilling sounds I've ever recorded. When I wanted to use it for an album, I realized I hadn't asked the family's permission. It seemed too private, a curtain best left undrawn. Even today, I constantly question where the ethical boundaries are in the use of sound.”

In search of an answer, Herbert took advantage of the pandemic lockdown to write his doctorate on precisely those limits. Anyone who wants to read it can download it for free online. “Many people associate music with entertainment, but what about the moral duty of the artist?” he adds to all his questions. Herbert has also found time to direct his first film, a short documentary titled Listen Like a Banana (2023), which graphically and sonically records the journey of a banana from its harvest in the Dominican Republic to the musician's mouth. “I have a banana of the same brand for breakfast every morning. What effort goes into growing, processing, and transporting it so I can devour it so happily at home? I discovered many things, like that the variety we commonly eat, the Cavendish, is at risk of extinction due to a new strain of fungus that has spread due to monoculture farming; or that when they arrive in England, they are sprayed with ethylene to preserve their proper ripening. What we eat explains the world we live in. In fact, the primary cause of climate change is food production, and 30% of it is never consumed. In the US, 72 million chickens are slaughtered every day, and almost a third end up being thrown away without anyone eating them. How did we come to build such an insane society? I can't help but ask myself these kinds of questions. Why am I here today? Did I need to travel to give this concert in Madrid, or is it just a whim?”

He says this with a certain remorse: Herbert always travels by train around Europe, but today he made an exception and flew back to be back at his Canterbury farm the next day in time for his eldest son's 18th birthday celebration.

Most of his experimental madness revolves around the same thing : denouncing voracious capitalism and promoting climate justice. He's even been toying with the idea of ​​starting his own political party for years. At first, he wanted to call it "Who Are We Waiting For ?"; now, he says he'd call it " Repair ." "I still believe that the right idea can change the world and that art should have the power to overthrow governments. My musical projects are a creative response to political situations, although sometimes it's frustrating to see how little real impact they have. To enter politics, you have to develop leadership skills, which I'm not sure are my cup of tea... in addition to the investment of money and time that it entails," he laments.

Worthy of special mention is his most recent monumental project, The Horse (2023), an album recorded with the London Contemporary Orchestra with which he sought to delve into the origins of music, no less. To do so, he first wanted to buy the remains of a dinosaur, “but it was beyond my humble budget [he laughs]. So I acquired the skeleton of the next largest animal I could find: a horse.” This work of sound archaeology collects up to 7,000 sounds from this animal (including bone flutes, lyres, and a harp) and represents a critical journey through the history of humanity based on its relationship with this equine ally: from its decisive use as a labor force that made the Industrial Revolution possible to its lucrative exploitation in horse racing. “I even tried to secretly record the echoes of the Altamira Caves [Cantabria] with my cell phone, where painted representations of horses were found 22,000 years ago. But I got almost nothing. I went to an archaeological acoustic engineer who had mapped the echoes of these caves and included them in the final recording. Much of my work deals with the way our bodies have occupied the planet, with the vast landscape of problems generated by the human species. And, once again, our use of horses has greatly contributed to climate change,” he reiterates.

Now he's looking for someone to pay to commit to caring for a rescued parrot for life, so he can prepare another album with an orchestra. "The idea is for the parrot to listen to texts about climate change and decide which messages to learn and repeat, and which to ignore. Parrots can learn up to 900 words, but they can also say nothing. We'll record whatever the parrot decides," he laughs.

With 45 albums under his belt, Matthew Herbert lives a contradiction: he thinks there's too much music in the world and that it's become just another disposable product. However, he composes an average of five or six songs a day, which amounts to about 2,000 a year. “The truth is, I don't compose that much music as an artist. A lot of it is collaborations. Right now, for example, I'm working on the soundtrack for Rosebush Pruning, by director Karim Aïnouz; on the musical setting for Titus Andronicus with the Royal Shakespeare Company; and on a piece for a charity theater company for the homeless. For those three projects, I've composed about 150 pieces in the last three weeks. I get involved in projects that can somehow contribute to small changes, open up discussions or lines of thought. There's probably a contradiction in the fact that I compose so much in a world so saturated with music, but it's an overwhelming need.”

And he hopes to soon tackle one of his ambitions: writing and directing a feature film. “Although it's proving very difficult. Because music is an abstraction; my horse project is an abstraction, but if it were a film, they'd want to know the horse's name, where it grew up, who it belonged to... Whereas with music, you're spared all that, you can be more lazy.” Given so much creative frenzy, haven't you considered enlisting artificial intelligence to help you out? “I've hardly used it, but I've played around with it, of course, like everyone else. I recently asked him, 'What should Matthew Herbert's next album be?' And he replied, 'Matthew Herbert's next album should be about artificial intelligence.' How vain is AI!”