Scale from Matthew Herbert is a collection of novel, high level hybrid electro pop and semi-house songs, broadly drawing on disco music — the cosmopolitan, upscale, theatrical and orchestrated end of the disco spectrum to be precise — and constructed with adherence to Herbert’s strict no drum machines, no sampling other artists, value/include errors manifesto, meaning a percussive template of stretching, creaking, squashed, elastic self-sourced, distinctively-timbred sounds. It’s all richly flavoured with romantic mid 20th century musical orchestration and swinging 1930s/40s brass ensemble playing, all of which is jarringly at odds with the underlying concepts: this is an album that deals with imperialism, war, oil, and consumerism, its heavy duty ideological content present not only in lyrics but also in samples of objects including coffins and an RAF Tornado bomber. If it sounds like a duck bill platypus of an album, it’s not; the 723 objects that were sampled and then put through whatever studio editing processes Matthew Herbert uses, are integrated with sumptuous organic instrumentation and wrought into unique composite songs for vocalist Dani Siciliano to work her magic with, the various elements coalescing into something fresh, elegant, multi-layered, and full of those little moments in songs that you listen out for.