"When you start building something, you've got to have a vague idea of what it is before you start. So with HERBERT it was house, a house. And with 100lbs, it was a bungalow, with a cellar/basement mind but a bungalow nevertheless. Rather than scrap the bungalow, I knocked a few walls through, changed the colour scheme and decided to add a few more floors and a garden and a small garage. The form is the same, it is still a house but with new d�cor, my style, more personal. When changing stuff around I found some of my old instruments in boxes in the cellar - electric bass, guitar and even the violin I spent 18 years learning. It was time for songs. With Dani, she sang. She'd also built a small house of her own in San Francisco so knew a house from a caravan. In this house the sounds are important. With one or two exceptions, they are not drum machines, they are my sounds. The sounds of the environment singing in ways you need a microphone to hear. But this is not important. This is really important. Take a step back and look at it from the outside. It's a bit wonky and I fluffed up a few times but the shape is roughly what I had in mind and you can't see the end of the garden.This time I've left the roof off for you to look in and I'm also thinking about adding another level, maybe next year next time."

"Once again, Matthew Herbert delivers a sublime album, full of grace and innovation. Each track is a jewel sculptured in his own luminous style : "collage" of sparkling beats, bitterweet melodies, bubblegum keyboards and odd sounds from everyday life. Herbert is as skillful in producing "poppy" hits ("So now", "Never give up" with his muse and singer Dani Siciliano) as in putting together pieces of minimalistic ambient with faded beats ("The Last Beat", the ocean deep "In The Kitchen"...) and he manages to mingle an almost na�ve melodic simplicity with inner sounds in a unique way."

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