Pioneering microhouse producer and electronic conceptualist Matthew Herbert is here to stuff food in both your face and your ears. Organized in chronological order, from birth to butcher, his latest found-sound experiment is built around the life cycle of a farm pig. The album becomes more conventionally musical as it unfurls — from field recording to paranoid sample symphony to acoustic dirge. Through death, song is born; through song, life endures. PETA is already protesting, but they’re missing the point. Herbert shows uncommon sensitivity toward this animal raised for slaughter. He’s immortalized it in sound. Typically, fate is far crueler.
