I've heard of the concept of "nose to tail" in gastronomic terms - but avant-garde composer Matthew Herbert has brought it into the sphere of music with his new album The Horse. As he explained to Daniel Dylan Wray in the Guardian, the instrumentation on the record includes "thigh-bone flutes, bows crafted from ribs and horse hair, a gut string stretched over the pelvis" and - perhaps most remarkably - shakers made out of solidified semen balls. Talk about flogging a dead horse...
The article also covers other like-minded experimental artists who've found sources of sound in unusual places. I knew about Einsturzende Neubauten's drills and cement mixer and Matmos using recordings of liposuction and noses being broken for A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure, but Wray also mentions Scott Walker's meat percussion, the work of Katie Gately and Daniel Blumberg's new album Gut.
Is it all just gimmicky novelty, though? Herbert suggests that novelty is indeed a factor, but in a positive sense: "You end up with little sonic surprises and it's far more invigorating and exciting from a compositional point of view to be playing those kinds of noises rather than instruments that have existed for millennia ... Music making is so full of laptops, plugins, screens, black plastics and very shiny perfect surfaces. It's nice to turn all that off and pick up the leg of a horse and pass air through it." Fair enough - it certainly makes for an interesting experience for the listener too.
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