Ten Lives

In early 2008, Herbert was commissioned by a collaborative project between Peter Gabriel and Bowers & Wilkins to record an acoustic album at Gabriel's Real World Studios. The result of these sessions - "Ten Lives" - was released as a digital download in July 2008, available only from the Bowers & Wilkins website as part of their Music Club.

In early 2008, Herbert was commissioned by a collaborative project between Peter Gabriel and Bowers & Wilkins to record an acoustic album at Gabriel's Real World Studios. The result of these sessions - "Ten Lives" - was released as a digital download in July 2008, available only from the Bowers & Wilkins website as part of their Music Club.

Ten may be classic rock today, but it's easy to underestimate how radical Pearl Jam sounded back in 1991, even with Nirvana ascendant. After several long years of hair metal dominance, here was a band that could jam stadium-large, texture their sound darkly and densely, and explode the blues-rock template. Here was a frontman with an entirely new stage presence, whose voice strained hard for sincerity and whose songwriting expressed grave self-reckoning without resorting to easy sentiments or self-glorifying choruses. Against the odds– as well as against the band's wishes, apparently– their debut became a phenomenon, an alt-rock figurehead as crucial as Nevermind in ushering in and defining the parameters for mainstream rock. Vedder's self-doubts ran as deep as Cobain's, but he expressed them bluntly and directly rather than poetically and obscurely. Oh and also, he's still alive.

Struggles are sloshed away by tidal waves of champagne. Resolutions are boldly proclaimed or whispered in one’s own heart. A ball drops, and we expect a whole new life to spring out. But nothing is transformed or transposed, because miracles don’t happen during the hung time between last year and this one. It’s just another New Year’s Eve.

Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue explores the timeless moral issues of human existence through ten contemporary tales, each based on one of the Ten Commandments. Originally produced for Polish television, this brilliant series of ten separate but subtly intertwining films transcended the boundaries of film and TV, winning honors in both arenas as it played around the world. The Decalogue won the FIPRESCI Award at the 1989 Venice Film Festival, was honored as Best Foreign Television Program by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and was named Best Foreign Language Film by the Chicago Film Critics Association in 1997. Each episode was co-written by Kieslowski's longtime collaborator Krzysztof Piesiewicz and features music by Zbigniew Preisner.