Matthew Herbert’s imaginary Leipzig

news | Jan 27th, 2011 | View Comments

My lone experience of Leipzig amounts to a single disorienting hour spent trying to get from the train station — after a blurry, wee-hours ride from Jena, where I had stayed up all night drinking with the Wighnomy Brothers — to the airport, where I eventually caught my plane with mere minutes to spare.

I don’t know if Matthew Herbert has ever even set foot in the city, but his new song ‘Leipzig’ is the perfect soundtrack for feeling lost in a strange place. So is the video, a darkly dazzling clip directed by Margaret Salmon, which features a few sides of Herbert you may have never seen — bearded and clean-shaven, singing and lip-synching, wearing makeup and dancing a cute little Charlie Chaplin-style jig. (Also, I don’t know about you, but I never expected to hear Herbert sing, “Share a little pill with me tonight, let us do a line”.)

‘Leipzig’, out this week backed with an instrumental version and a JJTOP remix, is the lead single from Herbert’s upcoming album ‘One One’, a strictly solo joint where Herbert has played, performed, and sung everything himself, in a shift from his increasingly collaborative projects. The first of three longplayers he’s releasing this year, ‘One One’ will be followed by ‘One Club’, sourced entirely from sounds recorded one night at Frankfurt’s Robert Johnson club, and ‘One Pig’, a record made entirely with the sounds of a single pig, from the sty to the dinner table.

Watch this video on Beatportal