Matthew Herbert released his first album,
100 Lbs, in 1996, which “gathers early 12″s from a time when Herbert was very much a ‘dance music’ producer”. In 1998, Herbert issued
Around the House with
Dani Siciliano, which mixed dance beats, sounds generated by everyday kitchen objects, and vocals. By the late 90's, Herbert was remixing tracks for dance artists like
Moloko, Motorbass, Alter Ego, and others. (Many of these were later collected on
Secondhand Sounds: Herbert Remixes.) He also recorded singles, EPs, and albums under a variety of aliases (Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, and Transformer) as well as his own name. In 2001, Herbert issued
Bodily Functions. Similar in structure to
Around the House, it featured sounds generated by manipulating human hair and skin as well as internal bodily organs.
Bodily Functions benefited a record deal with
Studio !K7, making it Herbert's first full-length work to receive worldwide distribution.
Goodbye Swingtime, a 2003 album issued under the name The Matthew Herbert Big Band, combined the political commentary of Radio Boy with the song structure of his Herbert albums. Recorded with sixteen musicians from the British jazz world, including saxophonists
Dave O'Higgins and
Nigel Hitchcock, pianist
Phil Parnell, and bassist
Dave Green, the band is complemented on stage by Siciliano,
Arto Lindsay,
Warp recording artist
Jamie Lidell, and Mara Carlyle. In 2005, he released a record entitled
Plat du Jour, a record made entirely from objects and situations in the food chain. He recorded beneath the sewers of Fleet Street, with Vietnamese coffee beans, inside industrial chicken farms, drove a tank over a recreation of the dinner that
Nigella Lawson cooked for
George Bush and
Tony Blair, and recorded 3500 people biting an apple at the same time. The track entitled "The Final Meal of Stacey Lawton" was made in collaboration with renowned chef
Heston Blumenthal. On 30 May 2006, Herbert issued
Scale, his most successful album to date. In the US, it reached number 20 on
Billboard's electronic music album chart.
Entertainment Weekly remarked, "Herbert sneakily subverts Scale's apocalyptic thematic thread into something warm and danceable." Online magazine
Pitchfork Media noted, "Sophisticated and whimsical, joyful and yet tinged with sadness, Scale is one of this year's great albums." The second album by The Matthew Herbert Big Band, ''
There's Me And There's You'', was released in October 2008. In the making of the record Herbert recorded inside the
Houses of Parliament, at a
landfill site, and in the lobby of the
British Museum with 70 volunteers. In 2009 Matthew Herbert was involved in the
2009 Eurovision Song Contest. He wrote and produced the music accompanying the 42 "postcards," short films introducing the country being represented next. In addition, Herbert wrote an orchestral piece for an interval act involving two "children flying in on a giant plastic swan." In 2010 Matthew Herbert released two of a three part trilogy of albums. The first,
One One, was entirely written and performed by Herbert alone, the second,
One Club, was made exclusively out of sounds recorded at the Robert Johnson nightclub in
Offenbach in
Germany on one night. That same year he also released a reworking of
Mahler's tenth symphony for the
Deutsche Grammophon's Recomposed series. Much of the recording was made inside Mahler's composing hut in
Toblach, by his graveside and in a crematorium. In late 2011, the final part of the trilogy,
One Pig, was released. Herbert recorded the life cycle of a farmed pig from birth to the dinner plate. The animal rights organisation
PETA condemned the album when it was announced without hearing it. Herbert, who is not a vegetarian, responded that their complaints were "utterly absurd" and that he wanted his music to encourage people to "listen to the world a little more carefully." In August 2012,
Meaningless was released under the pseudonym DJ Empty. The album was an experiment to see if war samples could be disguised in the form of dance music, making it a conceptual precursor to Matthew Herbert's
The End of Silence (2013), which openly acknowledges the central focus on an audio sample from the
Raid on Ras Lanuf. On 11 March 2013 a newly commissioned work by Herbert, for orchestra with electronics, based on a work by
Rameau, was performed at
The Roundhouse in London, as part of
BBC Radio 3's "
Baroque Remixed" series. In March 2013, his first five albums under moniker
Herbert were released as
Herbert Complete featuring bonus material and Abbey Road Sessions. Initially it was an
iTunes Store (now
Apple Music) exclusive (and subsequently released for streaming on
Spotify too), but has never been sold in lossless physically or digitally. On 20 March 2015 Herbert announced
The Shakes, his first album of dance music in nine years. This was followed up with the release of "Middle," the first track from the album.
The Shakes was released in an innovative way, making one track and short accompanying film available on streaming and video platforms each week leading up to the album release. On 22 October 2021 Herbert released the album
Musca on Accidental Records. In October 2023 Herbert received an
Ivor Novello Award nomination at The Ivors Classical Awards.
Estuary Sound Ark, a community project involving young participants and sounds collected by the local community in South Essex and North Kent was nominated for the Best Community and Participation Composition. Herbert was awarded the
Ivor Novello Award for Innovation, presented in association with the
Musicians' Union, at The Ivors Classical Awards 2023. The award acknowledged his outstanding contribution to music. In October 2024 Herbert received another
Ivor Novello Award nomination at The Ivors Classical Awards.
The Horse, for orchestra, horse skeleton and electronics, was nominated for Best Large Ensemble Composition. Herbert went on to win the
Ivor Novello Award on 12 November 2024. == Theories and politics ==