Chris Herbert

Discography · Selected works across labels

Grisaille
2026
Room40
Grisaille
Developed between 2023 and 2025, recorded autumn 2025 to spring 2026.

Grisaille is shaped by reduction, intuition, and time. Built from a deliberately restricted palette, it unfolds as a slow, improvised drift; material surfaces, lingers, and recedes, never fixed or over-determined.

The work foregrounds the first gesture. Takes are kept as they arrive rather than rehearsed into place, trusting that the life of a piece sits in its initial instinct, not its refinement.

In quiet dialogue with earlier works, Grisaille returns to familiar ground: the same instincts and process revisited under altered conditions, sharpened by time. Memory and place are not described so much as carried, embedded traces held in texture, weight, and silence.
Ogive - Opalescentia
2024
Room40
Digital
Opalescentia
Ogive (Chris Herbert & Elías Merino)
A departure from the previous collaborative work as Ogive, this album embraces emerging physicality alongside delicate microtextures. An extended process of creative tension between Herbert and Merino, designed as an immersive virtual weather system.
Relocations
2022
Wrong Speed Records
Cassette / Digital
Relocations
Born from the notion of "Sandy Bull meets King Tubby," this collection transforms guitar vignettes from Chris Summerlin (Hey Colossus) through processing, re-amping, and re-contextualization. Each track emerged virtually fully formed on first take. For lovers of electric guitars, amplifier hiss, tape delay, and rackety drum machines.
Ogive - Folds
2017
Room40
Digital
Folds
Ogive (Chris Herbert & Elías Merino)
A collaborative exploration of the interplay between distinct approaches to sound. Combining processed found sound with algorithmic composition. Focused on the beauty of imperfection and sonic accidents, an ever-shifting interplay between laminar plateaus and intricate surface detail.
Katushki
2016
Low Point
Cassette / Digital
Katushki
Two longform pieces of structured collage. The first documents collaborative pieces and spontaneous investigation of fractured textures. The second was conceived for cassette, using the medium as a core sound process. Themes of phasing and stippled atmospherics pervade throughout.
Constants
2014
Room40
CD / Digital
Constants
Constants' prismatic themes and motifs extend Herbert's long-standing interest in the extensive reshaping of found sounds and environmental sources.
Wintex-Cimex
2008
Room40
Digital
Wintex-Cimex
Thematically informed by "radar, dying stars, aeronautics, ailing short waves flickering in the troposphere, the ghost of JG Ballard". Vertical movement and flecks of cellular detail hint at the implication of rhythm within subtly shifting sound layers.
Mezzotint
2006
kranky
CD / Digital
Mezzotint
Herbert's debut on kranky established his approach to electronic processing and organic sound manipulation, creating the foundation for his ongoing exploration of electronic abstractions and textural environments.