Taking his name from both a race horse that always fared poorly and a college friend's yelp of "Rockits!" whenever things fared well, Matthew Herbert enacted the persona of Doctor Rockit for, appropriately, his most quotidian and most personal compositions, the best of which are now collected on the self-deprecating The Unnecessary History of Doctor Rockit.
On Herbert's Clear Records debut, 1996's Ready to Rockit EP, as well as 1997's The Music of Sound, the musique concrete artist adopted what he calls in retrospect his "diary theme." Herbert used everyday samples from Doctor Rockit's (the horse) Pyrrhic-only victory to Herbert's own childhood stomping grounds to hotels, restaurants and airplanes he encountered on his European tour with Cheap Records. The tracks combined Herbert's tendency towards jazz and the quieter, more electro sound that aligned him so well with Clear, whose artistic unwillingness to follow the trend back to club music in the late 1990s spelled their demise.
At the time of Clear's dissolution, Herbert hooked up with vocalist Dani Siciliano and began recording sleeker and ultimately more successful material under Herbert's surname; Doctor Rockit and his "anything goes" schtick were sidelined until 2000's Indoor Fireworks. A veritable grab bag, the somewhat unrealized Indoor Fireworks is a remarkably honest self-portrait of Herbert. Straightforward audio-diary tracks like "Metro", "Cafe de Flore", and "Cath's Machine" share space with Herbert's political concerns on "Hymnformation", and even the pre-Herbert, Siciliano-voxed "Summer Love", the album's standout track (and one that is surprisingly not included on The Unnecessary History).
Hindsight may be 20/20, but in a very real way, Indoor Fireworks signaled Doctor Rockit's increasingly poor health. Which is not to say that Herbert is incapable of personal expression outside of the alias; it just seems the Herbert project, his musico-personal relationship with Siciliano, and his increasingly political edge were the only things worth expressing. Especially after the acclaimed Around the House-- an audio crossroads for Herbert's loves and musical politics-- this comp's title seems right on the money. Which is perhaps why, with The Unnecessary History of Doctor Rockit, Matthew Herbert is killing off that moniker.
The compilation rescues many deleted and hard-to-find tracks from Doctor Rockit's early Clear days, early vinyl-only releases on Herbert's own Life and Lifelike labels, a few tracks from Indoor Fireworks, and Doctor Rockit's most recent release, "Veselka's Diner". It's a testament to Herbert how well these tracks have aged. Opener "Cameras and Rocks" is from the 1996 Ready to Rockit double 10-inch, yet its minimal puddle-synth jungle-shuffle and outlandishly funny synthesizer melody have retained their potency, undoubtedly from the high degree of subtlety to which Herbert almost apologetically subjects his work. Also from Ready to Rockit is the slurpy jazz-finding-loops of "Photos and Pebbles"-- the musical mold that birthed "Cameras and Rocks"-- which invites comparisons to Jan Jelinek.
While sometimes musically minimal, the Doctor Rockit project also at times predicted the Matthew Herbert Big Band-- the 1996 DR EP Swingtime is likely being referenced in the title to MHBB's 2003 release, Goodbye Swingtime. "Cafe de Flore" has found itself on more lounge-style compilation discs than possibly any other Herbert song. Its acoustic brushes-on-snare cocktail jazz-tinged house is buttered up by Herbert's tasteful ambient samples and catchy synth and accordion melodies. Occasionally, Herbert ditches the glitch and records his instruments in the nude. These tracks, such as the piano solo at the end of "I Wish I Was", are far less interesting than the equal parts jazz-meets-house that Herbert executes so seamlessly. Still, while Herbert is a gifted pianist, he does have a tendency for trite jazz phrases.
The compilation fittingly closes with "Granny Delicious", which contains Herbert's first-ever "field recording" sample (the sound of an apple being eaten), yet part of me also wished Herbert closed The Unnecessary History with the leftfield accordion drinking song "This Is The End", however tongue-in-cheek it would have been.
Beyond functioning as a disjointed but accurate retelling of Doctor Rockit's story and breadth of styles, The Unnecessary History also documents Herbert's apparently deep concern that his music of sound is, in fact, still music. From his lengthy sampling treatise to his recourse to jazz modes to his anxious use of live, man-played instruments, Herbert oddly strikes me as never seeming fully convinced of his music's worth. That tension is more apparent on Herbert's Doctor Rockit records than any other point in his career, which is perhaps one reason why The Unnecessary History is a compelling tale spun by one of the world's most meticulous and exciting artists.
