There's Me and There's You (Bonus Track Version)

Like the San Francisco-based duo Matmos, the British electronic producer Matthew Herbert — who records as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain, and under other names — often creates music that has a conceptual bent. The most obvious example is 2001’s Bodily Functions, whose title points to some of the album’s source material. For people unaware of Herbert’s formal music background, Goodbye Swingtime, a 2003 release featuring a large ensemble (The Matthew Herbert Big Band) came as a surprise. Five years later, the shape-shifting artist has come up with a successful sequel, There’s Me and There’s You. The opener, “The Story,” brings to mind the elegant disco swing of the great 1970s group, Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band. But what are those odd sounds you hear on the track? It turns out they were produced by manipulating stacks of mainstream magazines and newspapers, the sort of publications that the song’s lyrics critique. The highly melodic “Yessness” sounds like a slice of jazzy musical theater, but you won’t find many productions on Broadway or London’s West End that use dozens of samples of people, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, saying “yes.” Eska, the album’s lead vocalist, dazzles throughout.