The last volume in Matthew Herbert's "One" trilogy contains the same sonic ruminations on consumerism and mechanization as the previous installments, as well as their mood and tenor. Like One One, a heady singer-songwriter record, there's a hushed creeping intimacy to the thing, and a Zen-like acceptance of overbearing forces, even if it intends to keep on kicking against them. Like One Club, which twisted field recordings from the Frankfurt nightclub Robert Johnson into splayed-apart dance music, thereby ingesting corporatized club culture on its own terms, One Pig is an overwhelming, inscrutably political electronic record culled from an unlikely source. In this case, it consists of manipulated recordings Herbert made of a pig's life, "from birth to plate."
This certainly isn't the exploitation record PETA assumed it was gonna be, and it's not a slab of musical vegan didacticism that presumably, many more, who prefer their music to be good first, and message-oriented second, feared either. No matter how visceral Herbert's mix of animal grunts and menacing electronics feel, the message is never something simple like, "it sure is sad that we kill animals." Rather, it moves listeners to be more mindful of consumption and waste (the pig's parts were even turned into instruments), while acknowledging just how strangely disconnected we are from the animals killed to put food on our table, or say, shoes on our feet.
But the lingering feeling on One Pig, the first half in particular, is still one of abject horror. "September" (each song is named after the time of year when the sounds contained therein were recorded) begins with stabs of noise that could be from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre score, and then shifts into a slowly molting rhythm, punctuated by horrifying retches from the pig. As the track perversely bounces along, the animal wails become harsher, and Herbert pulls the growl in and out of the mix and you begin to expect, even anticipate them. Its appearance in the mix becomes as viscerally rewarding as a typical pop-song hook.
Much of the record intends to freak listeners out, but there are gorgeous moments of pause too, and often those conflicting feelings are contained on the same track, making the message complex and never one-note. "November" is a delicate recording of the pig oinking, jaggedly interrupted by telling sounds (knives clanging together, something plopping on a hard surface) and nervous rhythms (gulps of tinny feedback, vibrant drumming), foreshadowing the pig's death, and even suggesting it's oddly cognizant of the end in some way. It's a way to invoke empathy for the creature. But then, the track bounds foreword into an intense damaged dance track, slamming into "December" which begins with an ominous metal gate opening. Rarely does a piece of music feel this genuinely temporal-- like anything could happen at any moment.
As One Pig moves closer to the end, the songs gain focus and the pig itself is subsumed into the process, not just sampled, but literally creating the music thanks to a strange "pig blood organ" and a drum made of pigskin. "August 2010" begins with recordings of the pig being cut up and fried, and ends with it being joyously consumed by a room of people. In between is a sea of strange, melodic whines and moans-- like the pig cheaply Auto-Tuned or vocoded. According to this excellent making-of video on The Guardian's website, the sound's generated by that organ, whose sucking rhythms are the result of blood coursing through the instrument.
To suggest you cannot enjoy the record would be inaccurate, but Herbert has cleverly designed an album that must be experienced on its own terms. The last track, a touching, voice-and-guitar ode to the pig by Herbert that looks back to One One's simplicity-- and in that sense, provides circularity to the entire trilogy-- makes the pig's absence palpable. Throughout the album, even those most viscerally catchy and hypnotic songs, just as they're almost getting into a conventional groove, are boldly interrupted by the pig, making it impossible to ignore the processes that lead to the record's creation. Imagine if those really sweet leather boots you bought let out a "moo" every time you stuck them on your feet and tightened the laces.
Herbert notes in the making-of video that, for legal reasons, he could not record the actual death of the pig. And that says a great deal more about government-sanctioned ignorance and the bizarre regulations on food manufacturing than One Pig really ever could. What Herbert has put together is a witty, difficult, touching testament to making something lasting out of one of the world's many cruel inevitabilities.
