Electronic sampling fiend Matthew Herbert has compared his role to that of a war photographer, his eye fixed on the scandalous crimes committed by corporations and politicians. And yet as usual his latest project, a one-off concert with the RNCM big band, was subtly flavoured with surreal comedy, including video images of balloon sculptors and a dentally challenged Tony Blair.

Herbert spent most of the concert surrounded by a laboratory of equipment. While the orchestra blared, the madcap genius pulled levers and flicked switches like some Wellsian time traveller about to disappear in a puff of smoke. Not only were band members required to suck and blow balloons and rustle newspapers, but their musical efforts were sampled live by the composer, only to be played back moments later as a series of distorted pips and squeaks.

Herbert's contribution to the evening was frequently nothing more than a disgruntled electronic mutter.

The combination of Herbert's broadstroke thematic writing with Peter Wraight's pictorial accompaniment introduced many interesting images: a strutting, priapic pensioner; a fleet of heroic Gerry Anderson puppets.

He may be an artist struggling to alert us to the evils of the world, but Herbert's political agenda is still better gleaned from his album sleeve notes than from his agreeably barmy music.