Matthew Herbert Announces 'One Pig' Details

BY Josiah HughesPublished Jul 5, 2011

In a career that has already been full of surprises, electronic pop experimenter Matthew Herbert has perhaps topped himself with the anticipated and ambitious One Pig. Now, two years after it was announced, the album will finally hit stores this fall.

The project saw Herbert record the entire life cycle of a pig from birth to death and use that as the source material for an album. When the album was announced, it drew the ire of PETA, who released the following statement:

No one with any true talent or creativity hurts animals to attract attention, but we are sorry Matthew Herbert couldn't include the screams of pigs being made into bacon on his record, as they would have instantly turned some people into vegetarians... Pigs are inquisitive, highly intelligent, sentient animals who become frightened when they are sent to slaughterhouses, where they kick and scream and try to escape the knife. They are far more worthy of respect than Matthew Herbert or anyone else who thinks cruelty is entertainment.

Herbert responded by saying he was "puzzled and disappointed" by PETA's assumptions, explaining that his intentions with the project are much more than simple entertainment. As a press release explains, the album "aims to listen in on a single farm animal's life in the context of an otherwise-anonymous food chain."

One Pig will be available on October 11 via Herbert's own Accidental Records.

One Pig:

1. "August 2009"
2. "September"
3. "October"
4. "November"
5. "December"
6. "January"
7. "February"
8. "August 2010"
9. "May 2011"

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