Disquiet

Here’s a puzzle of a recipe. What do the following ingredients yield: Dry coconut, Eden organic grape juice in a glass bottle, organic peanuts in a plastic bag, Mount Hagen decaffeinated organic coffee in a glass jar with a plastic top, and two out-of-season apples? Well, if you’re Matthew Herbert, and those food goods were delivered to your small Brixton studio by representatives of the BBC, then they yield a tidy little upbeat track titled “Esme’s Waltz” (MP3), a chock-a-block wind-up toy of countless little percussive elements. As on Herbert’s new album, Plat du Jour, all of those individual sounds were derived from contorted samples of edible items. The BBC page where the file is housed also includes streaming video of Herbert constructing the track (bbc.co.uk). Esme’s is the name of the store where the goods were purchased.

By Marc Weidenbaum