Search - Matthew Herbert :: Goodbye Swingtime

Just because you can doesn't mean you should

ADRIAN MCCORMACK | Sapporo, Hokkaido Japan | 03/31/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"It's hard to listen objectively to this album considering Herbert's past brilliance. A lot of the gushy reviewers would probably consider a Herbert duet with Shania Twain 'pure genius'. First, this album has only token 'electronic' gestures - if you listen to it as background music you would think slightly avante garde big band. Second, it's only mildly interesting. My dad (65,a big Wagner, Miles Davis fan) said the following, 'This is pretty good but it's not very challenging'. The point is, like Richard James in Druqs (piano vignettes), Herbert is capable of producing some 'pretty good' big band music but it's not his genre. There are other more highly skilled, adept proponents of this art.
That being said, if you've brought your new girlfriend home and she's doesn't quite 'get' your normal clicks, beats and grooves, this'll do fine."

SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Darrell L. Lee | Jackson, MS | 10/29/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Matthew Herbert Big Band can be categorized either two ways: under jazz or under electronica. Although, at times on this brilliant piece of work from the aforementioned mixer-extraordinaire, the latter is very minimal, but appropriate enough to satisfy even your average electronica fan. When I saw "Goodbye Swingtime" in the record store (much to my surprise), I was kind of leary of how Big Band swing and Herbert's infamous style of mixing together irregular beats and noises would sound--However, I should have trusted this guy to be able to handle the situation! Herbert has already demonstrated from "Bodily Functions" and "Secondhand Sounds" that he is more than capable of taking the complex and layered sounds of Big Band and mastering it into something amazing as evidenced here on "Goodbye Swingtime!" Songs such as the swanky, "Fiction," the sexy, "The Three W's," the funky, "The Many and the Few," and the steamy, "Simple Minds" (only to single out a few songs here)can attest to the remarkable blend of two genres totally unrelated to each other. This is some very good stuff, and if you are truly a Herbert-supporter, you'll go out and get this CD--it's incredible!!"

One of these things is JUST like the other!

ADRIAN MCCORMACK | 03/05/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you like the lush, strange, ecstatic, retro-vocal melancholy, sublime, sampled and genre-bending compostions of United Future Organization, Enzso, Funki Porcini, Caleb's Cosmosis, Future Sound of London or Bowery Electric, then you will love this. 'nuff said."