While Matthew Herbert’s 2001 debut album in his Big Band incarnation Goodbye Swingtime represented one of his deepest forays yet into ‘live’ instrumentation and arrangement, seven years on this long-awaited follow-up There’s Me And There’s You sees him adopting a noticeably more electronic and sample-based feel. It’s also a collection that feels particularly influenced by Herbert’s recent, highly-conceptual works such as the food-themed Plat Du Jour and his more melodic Scale album, and indeed a quick glance at the sleevenotes provides a headspinning array of sample sources, including 70 condoms being slid across the British Museum floor, credit cards being cut up, a battery charger (more on this one later), the incubator that kept Herbert’s own premature son alive and 100 nails being hammered into a coffin.

While the above material reveals the dark subject matter lurking just below the surface here however, one of Herbert’s greatest talents is the way he’s able to reshape these ‘hated’ noises into something uplifting and optimistic. In many senses the central anchoring point of this 12 song collection is new vocalist Eska, who assumes the role previously occupied by Dani Siciliano, Luca Santucci and Jamie Lidell. Opening track The Story centres around the deadly vacuity of mass media, with Eska’s soaring vocals riding against a chorus hook of “This is the story / read nothing about it… There’s nothing here to distract you” as the sampled sounds of glossy magazines and a Madonna album provide a subtly clicking rhythmic undertone. The religion-themed Pontificate meanwhile wanders into full-fledged big band terrain, stabbing horns adding a theatrical and satirical edge to Eska’s “Sex, sex, sex, sexy” vampy riffs (the real target here being religious puritans), before Nonsound sees Herbert returning to a sound collage oriented approach, with ambient recordings from Palestine including the sound of protestors being shot against a wall providing an unsettling atmospheric undertow to the melancholic horn arangements that drift through.

It’s the aforementioned Battery though, that easily provides one of this album’s most arresting offerings – inspired by the wrongful imprisonment of Ghanaians Bisher Al Rawi and Jamil El Banna for nothing more than the purchase of a home battery charger, it swiftly moves from strident beeping electro into one of the most spectacular big band epics here. Indeed, it’s fairly typical of this thematically complex yet extremely accessible album – one that manages to continually reveal new surprises and detail with each ensuing listen.

Check out www.matthewherbert.com and www.accidentalrecords.com.