The Herbaliser: renegades of pop

(© Matt Humphrey)

The Herbaliser has just kept on doing its thing since the early 1990s: great musical hip hop based on samples from funk, soul, and jazz, with guest MCs. At the Vk* the British band will present its seventh album, There Were Seven, together with the rapper Ghettosocks.

The Herbaliser first saw the light of day in the early 1990s in West London when Jake Wherry (see photo, on the right) and Ollie Teeba set out to fuse their collection of groove, funk, and jazz vinyl with their passion for hip hop. Twenty years later they still stand shoulder to shoulder: “On Remedies and Blow Your Headphones [their first two records – BT] we started working with loops and samples of soul, funk, and jazz and drew inspiration from people like DJ Premier,” recalls Wherry. “DJ Premier mainly samples funk; we also draw on European jazz and other sources. But we still always take a sample as our starting point and add a hip-hop beat to it.”

So there’s nothing new on the new album?
Jake Wherry: There is: I use a lot of guitar, which is something I only did sporadically before. I use a psychedelic fuzz from the 1960s. The album is a bit harder and darker than our recent records.

On the CD sleeve there is a sort of binary world with people fleeing bits...
Wherry: The storyline of the album is about seven renegades returning home after a long absence. We are fleeing from a machine that gives the world perfect sounds but takes away all natural sounds. A machine that is used in all pop songs. Our mission is to destroy that machine in order to give the world its authentic sounds back. It is a loose concept...

A critique of today’s pop scene?
Wherry: More one of TV shows like The X Factor, which dominate the television, but also of the charts, which corrupt people’s musical taste. I grew up in the Seventies; my parents didn’t like the pop music I listened to, but in comparison with what my children listen to now, that was nothing! These days it is even hard to find interesting hip hop; it’s all electronic charlatanism.

Is that the message of “A Sad State of Affairs” too?
Wherry: Yes, it is about the music industry. It was recorded with the slammer George the Poet, who is attracting a lot of attention right now in the UK. He became known through posting his slam poetry on YouTube.

The first single, “The Lost Boy”, sounds like a reference to the glory days of trip hop.
Wherry: Yeah, that track was recorded with Hannah Clive, an excellent songwriter with a beautiful jazz voice, which we made a bit dirtier via distortion and intense compression.

As you sing in “Danny Glover”: aren’t you too old for that shit?
Wherry: [Laughs uproariously] The Rolling Stones are still doing it…

Would you carry on for another thirty years?
Wherry: We brought this album out on our own label and we didn’t find it easy getting the money together to record it. We have
had fantastic reviews in the press, on the radio, and also from fans on Facebook. But that is not enough. If people don’t buy it, there will be no more Herbaliser. I also have a family to support.

The Herbaliser • 15/12, 19.30, €15/18, Vk*, Schoolstraat 76 rue de l’École, Molenbeek, 02-413.04.10, 
www.vkconcerts.be