Plat du Jour

Matthew Herbert has a new album out all about (and made from the sounds of) food. Plat du Jour. Amazingly, it also happens to be damned good music, in addition to being a rad concept. He's been working on it since 2003, and once you dig into it more you'll understand why.

One track is made from samples of 3255 people eating an apple. Seriously.

AN APPLE A DAY...

The sounds of around 3255 people eating an apple.

65 individual people eating an apple on apple day 2004
crunchers at sonar festival, Barcelona, Babylon, Istanbul for two nights, in Montreal, the Pompidoo centre in Paris, and in London at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

All apples were local varieties, in season ( apart from Montreal where they were from cold storage) and organic.

The UK has over 2000 varieties of apple, but supermarkets prefer to import theirs from America, south Africa and New Zealand.

He has copious notes on how each track was made, including ingredient lists and the geo-political issues with that kind of food (how its farmed, imported, processed, etc).

He is also exploring doing independent internet distribution of his releases, and he's doing it right. Instead of charging essentially the same price for the download as you would for physical media, he's only charging 5 pounds (about $9) it is available for sale in AAC and MP3.