Thanks to some quirk of universal design, it seems far easier to criticise the things you dislike than to praise the things you do. But Matthew Herbert’s One One, in all its jaunty, space tourist-pop glory, is hard not to like.

The record is a spacious one, with room for Herbert’s warm vocals to unfurl and cover your senses like the clouds from a nuclear fallout. There is nothing audacious or glossy about the performances, but the more you listen the less it seems to matter. The lack of artifice coupled with his vulnerable, smoky voice offer an unexpected (and unprecedented) insight into the otherwise private life of the prolific producer.

Herbert’s move away from more political projects is made all the more significant by frail vocal performances on the album; quiet, husky and mysterious, but revealing all the same. One One is an easy listener with hooks in all the right places, and requires little scrutiny (unless you’re into that sort of thing). ‘ Dublin’ is a lively percussive track that vaguely recalls XTC and Jan Jelinek, while ‘Leipzig’ is a slow burning disco rambler.
Album closer ‘Valencia’ is floaty, so very floaty, while ‘Tonbridge’ feels vaguely like a Sci-Fi Adventure Hour complete with Geiger-counter synth sounds and ghostly background wailing . The rest of the album merits comparison to the likes of Vincent Gallo, Four Tet, Arthur Russell… Hell, even Laurie Anderson.

As another addition to the Herbert ouvre and a platform for Matthew-Herbert-the-Songwriter One One is a worthwhile listen, but feels too firmly rooted in futuristic imaginings and the spoiled vestiges of childlike-wonder to really lift the veil on Herbert’s enigma.
The entire album feels rather like a woozy descent into madness, a kind of psychotropic episode that comes from riding elevators after antibiotics on an empty stomach or, as the album seems to suggest, warping the space/time continuum to travel over continents in a single night.

Review Score: 8.5/10