Matthew Herbert x LCO’s The Horse, live at the Barbican – in pictures
Master sound manipulator’s most epic adventure yet
The last time Matthew Herbert played the Barbican’s Concert Hall he filled the stage with musicians, as his Brexit Big Band took to the stage, creating rhythms – most memorably – by ripping up copies of the Daily Mail.
This time round was lower on personnel, although hardly under populated, as he was joined by the London Contemporary Orchestra.
Nevertheless, the show was epic in other ways. It brought tgoether the LCO – who had previous collaborated with Ninja Tune’s Actress on an album and Proms show – and Herbert to perform The Horse , their collaborative album of earlier this year.
The album attempts to tap into the very moment music itself was invented, using the bones of a horse as its starting point. Herbert even travelled to the caves in France where the earliest cave paintings – of horses – so he could recreate the reverb of its surroundings on the LP.
The show traces the gradual evolution from basic percussion to blowing through bones to create flutes… all the way to banging house music.
As well as a musical tour de force, the show was an experimental theatrical event in its own right – and by its climax, had brought the house down.
