Clay

Clay is the debut full-length collaboration between Matthew Herbert and Momoko Gill. Producer, multi-instrumentalist, and sound architect Herbert is involved with many styles and genres, and many different artists. Gill (aka MettaShiba) is a composer/producer/songwriter and musician; her primary instruments are drum kit and voice. She is best known for her striking work with Alabaster DePlume. The pair collaborated on the single "Fallen" in 2024 that became an underground club anthem. Gill also remixed Herberts provocative "The Horse Is Here," composed and recorded entirely on horse bones. Clay is a sonically adventurous outing, not unlike Herberts Around the House, but traveling in an entirely different musical direction. While electronics are at the core of all these songs, they serve as an umbrella under which jazz, pop, soul, and vanguard songforms commingle and play. Further, Clay sounds completely organic with sparse charts carrying a rhythmically complex aesthetic utilizing conventional and found sources ranging from a Japanese koto to basketballs to kalimbas and field recordings amid samples and loops, offering dimension, nuance, and depth. First and foremost, this is a recording of songs. Gills melody and lyric writing are compelling. Opener "Clam Water" employs jazz syncopation in a rendering of contemporary neo-soul. Her croon is warm, layered, and precise in articulation and emotion. "Mowing" commences as a dance club anthem before it becomes a melodic rhythm collision amid samples, loops, and live drums. Gills vocal, no matter how deep her lyrics dig, remains centered and calm, almost eerily so because despite the controlled delivery, she offers a wealth of emotion. The brief "Heart" combines a circular broken piano sample and repetitive sonic washes under silhouetted vocals by both principals as they reveal vulnerable individual and collective truths. The single "Babystar" carries a charming house groove with a lilting yet insistent melody framed by backmasked flutes, driving tom-toms, and loops as Gill sings about inner healing. Jazz, pop, and neo-electro are stitched together in the labyrinthine percussion frenzy that is "Someone Like You." Gills strategically reverbed vocal atop a skittering house rhythm track flows. It winds around the harmony until Herbert gasses the tempo, then syncopates the loops and percussion. They transform the tune from a ballad to a dancefloor anthem. Throughout Clays 11 songs, Herbert and Gill create a musical statement of subtle skill and imagination, with killer charts and compositional sophistication. There isnt a middling second here; its a warm, summery album as groundbreaking as it is welcoming. ~ Thom Jurek

みずからの名義をはじめ、さまざまなアーティストとのコラボやプロデュース・ワークで唯一無二の存在感を示し続ける奇才マシュー・ハーバートが、サウス・ロンドンのクロスオーヴァーなシーンで経験を積むモモコ・ギルと、シングル"Fallen"での共演を発展させたコラボ・アルバムを完成。彼女の歌唱を前面に押し出した"Need To Run"、オーガニックなハウス・チューン"Babystar"など、二人が音を通じて対話を交わしているようなフレッシュで美しい世界観。お互いの距離感や尊重し合う関係性すら想起させるサウンドを聴けば、連名でリリースされた理由もきっと理解できるはずだ。
bounce (C)藤堂輝家