Prefuse 73 Pushes Hip-Hop Bounds

In a lineup of artists who are taking hip-hop in new directions, Scott Herren would look somewhat out of place.

An unassuming man who steers clear of illegal drugs and ostentatious jewelry, Herren seems more at home in a basement flipping through vinyl than in the back room of an exclusive nightclub with his entourage.

Although he was raised mainly in Atlanta, where his hip-hop roots go deep, Herren currently lives in his father’s hometown of Barcelona, far from the style and culture wars of the United States.

He has recorded using multiple pseudonyms, including electronic act Delarosa and Asora and the more organic Savath + Savalas. Herren is best known, however, for his groundbreaking work as Prefuse 73.

Prefuse takes his name from an era of music his alter-ego “holds dear”—the pre-fusion jazz of 1968 to 1973. Also influential for Herren are “80s edit records” and hip-hop, primarily from the years between 1988 and 1995.

Describing the Prefuse sound is an invitation to catastrophe; most focus primarily on the novelty in how he cuts up instruments and vocals.

The most unique aspect of his music, however, is the way he injects emotion into his tracks, working from source material that would come across as lifeless in the hands of lesser artists.

On tracks such as the brief yet haunting “Vikings Invade the Mediterannean But Don’t Leave,” Herren manages to coax heartbreaking beauty out of sterile piano samples, precise drums and various cut-up noises.

This is only one of the standout tracks from the recently released Extinguished: Outtakes EP, a testament to the creative powers of its architect. While working on a single for the song “Suite For The Way Things Change...” from his previous album One Word Extinguisher, Herren realized he liked many of his aborted Extinguisher efforts as much as the final album cuts.

The resulting record is a dizzying tour through rapidly changing soundscapes, from the epic swells of “Dubs That Don’t Match” to the joyous propulsion of “For Some But Not Me.” It took a visionary like Herren to make the leap from remixing individual songs to remixing his album as a whole, using Extinguished’s textures and sounds to craft a set of completely different songs.

Although the next album will not surface any time soon, Herren drops subtle hints about its content.

He says that, although he loves to “work with emcees when they come” to him, he will try to incorporate “different sorts of vocalists” on the new record.

Meanwhile, he says his upcoming Savath + Savalas album (due January) will “connect to places I haven’t exposed before.” Although the styles may differ considerably, Herren says that all of his music is inherently similar, all “inspired by the people and cultures around me and the way they interact with each other.”

Not content with limiting his innovations to his recorded work, at the Paradise in Boston last Tuesday Herren took his live show to a new level.

The current tour is his first with a live drummer—John Herndon (of Chicago post-rock group Tortoise), who made a huge impact.

Whereas opener Dabrye had some interesting tunes, one man nodding his head and flipping some switches does not an interesting concert make.

Prefuse, on the other hand, brought a sense of vitality and power to the crowded club, with the three musicians on-stage (including a DJ on turntables) coming across like a rock band.

With a performance that achieved his goal of “giving people the song” before embellishing and enhancing the already complex music, Herren seems to have found the perfect way to present his music live.

With his engaging showmanship, he strikes a distance from the laptop electronica of the so-called IDM (Intelligent Dance Music, apparently to distinguish it from dance music that goes to Yale).

Although Warp—the label that carries all of Prefuse’s releases—is a stronghold of IDM artists, Scott is quick to emphasize that his music springs from an MPC 2000 sampler/sequencer, and that he uses computers only in the production process.

“I value the artistic limits imposed by the more primitive technology,” he says. “I feel they help me focus on the song, instead of the production. Also, I can’t do shit with computers!”

Talking to Herren at length only shows how seriously he takes his art. “Keep your TV off!” he admonishes. “You have everything you need [at Harvard] to feed your brain!”

A believer in the album as a holistic work, he views the continuing trend towards downloading music files with some sadness.

Listening to music, Herren says, “should be a more organic process, the way the artist designed it.”

“If you look at some LP covers from the 70s and 80s, there is some gorgeous artwork,” he says, whereas an MP3 file “just floats” without a visual or physical anchor.