It’s no stretch to call Matthew Herbert one of the most important British artists of his generation. From the upper echelons of cinematic scoring and avant-garde composition to iconic, leftfield dance floor tracks and remixes, his accomplishments in music and sound are monolithic.
Best known for his innovative work on albums Bodily Functions and the One series (One Club, One One and One Pig), over the past decade Matthew Herbert has gained equal prominence composing scores for film & TV projects.
Matthew’s first foray into film music was for Human Traffic in 1999. Two films in four years for French director Etienne Chatiliez, La confiance regne (2004) and Agathe Clery (2008) bookended A Number (2008), a well-regarded BBC sci-fi drama starring Rhys Ifans, and Spanish film Y Vida Color.
Matthew’s collaboration with Chilean director Sebastian Lelio began with his critically acclaimed, debut feature film A Fantastic Woman (2017). Starring Daniela Vega as a young trans woman, whose life is turned upside down when her older lover dies in ambiguous circumstances, the film won both a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film 2018. Matthew went on to score Lelio‘s Disobedience – set in the North London Orthodox Jewish community, the film stars Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams – and Gloria Bell; a comedy-drama featuring Julianne Moore. And in 2022, Matthew scored The Wonder, in which Florence Pugh plays a nurse who travels from England to a remote Irish village in 1862 to investigate a young girl’s supposedly miraculous fast. Matthew’s “strange and ingenious score” (Indie Wire) won the British Independent Film Award for Best Original Music 2022. His latest score is for the hotly-anticipated Starve Acre directed by Daniel Kokotajlo and starring Matt Smith, which received its World Premiere at BFI London Film Festival 2023. Recently, Matthew scored the film April, directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili, which premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and is also set to feature at the BFI London Film Festival.
For television, Matthew has scored the BBC One series Noughts and Crosses (based on the book series by Malorie Blackman), the Sky One series Temple, starring Mark Strong, Britbox series The Beast Must Die (winning Best Titles at the Royal Television Society Awards 2021), and the harrowing docudrama Honour starring Keeley Hawes for ITV. Most recently, Matthew wrote for The Responder, a new BBC drama series starring Martin Freeman as a Liverpool cop on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
In 2023 Matthew was awarded the Ivor’s Academy Innovation Award at the Ivor’s Classical Awards, in recognition of his pioneering work in electronic music and his experimental use of unconventional sounds as instrumentation.
Connu pour sa contribution innovatrice aux albums ‘Bodily Functions’, et la série ‘One’ (‘One Club’, ‘One One’, et ‘One Pig’ qui est sorti récemment) au cours des dix dernières années, Matthew a discrètement construit sa carrière en musique de film.
Sa première incursion dans la musique de film était pour ‘Human Traffic‘ en 1999. Deux films en quatre ans pour le réalisateur français Etienne Chatiliez, La Confiance Règne (2004) et Agathe Clery (2008), encadrés par A Number (2008), une émission drame et science-fiction de la BBC, de petite échelle mais bien reçue, et mettant en vedette Rhys Ifans, et le film espagnol Y Vida Color (2005).
L’année passée, Matthew a collaboré de près avec le réalisateur Kevin MacDonald pour composer la bande originale de ‘Life In A Day‘. Un collage documentaire filmé par des cinéastes dans le monde entier en capsule de temps afin de montrer aux générations futures comment était la vie quotidienne au jour du 24 juillet 2010. Le film bénéficie considérablement de la superbe bande originale qui a été nominée pour un prix Ivor.
Plus récemment, en tant que dirigeant du nouveau Radiophonic Workshop, Matthew a composé une nouvelle bande-son pour la premier film science-fiction britannique, A Message From Mars (1913).