One Pig completes the trilogy of conceptual Matthew Herbert albums that began with One One, a low-key offering on which he played every single instrument. Its follow-up, One Club, was a glitch-symphony of found noises recorded by Herbert in one night at a German nightclub. One Pig, meanwhile, is an infinitely more disturbing project. The electro-auteur spent eight months visiting a British farm to record the complete lifespan of a bred-for-meat pig, from its birth squeals to its consumption served up on a plate. These noises are sampled and treated into bass lines, electro-squiggles and sonic textures: One track begins with the thud of the pig’s severed head hitting the kitchen chopping-table, while Herbert collaborator Henry Dagg invented an entire new instrument that forced the unfortunate swine’s blood up through tuned reeds. Herbert bemoans the fact that British law prevented him recording the actual slaughter of the pig, but the project has still aroused the ire of PETA and led to Facebook groups demanding the record’s withdrawal. As a vegetarian, this critic shares these protesters’ disquiet: The echoes of the terrified piglet’s trotters drumming on the floor of the slaughterhouse wagon are horribly heart-rending. Yet as an artistic statement by… read more »