The beats Guillermo Scott Herren has been constructing as Prefuse 73 for 15 years resemble the work of a master graphic designer. The way a skilled Adobe Creative Suite architect takes old, obscure fonts and images and re-appropriates them against a backdrop of razor-sharp typesetting and wide-open white space is retro-futurist art of the highest order, and it is similar to the way the Miami-born, Atlanta-bred producer builds his beats from fragments of voices, instruments and found sounds reprocessed through his MPC. And while he got his start in the experimental/post-rock realm under his Delarosa and Asora and Savath y Savalas monikers, it was Prefuse 73 that exhibited Herren's true skill set as a producer and composer. His grooves were not so much chopped up and flipped, in the DJ Premier sense, as they were shattered like an antique plate, only to be reassembled with the delicacy of a day-camp craft project.
His debut under the Prefuse handle, 2001's Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, harnessed the energy of Radiohead's Kid A and planted its formula smack in the middle of a white-hot hip-hop New York City underground, in the midst of Def Jux's heyday. It also gave Herren's label at the time, Warp Records, the credibility it so desperately sought out upon moving their offices to New York City: In the years that followed, Warp would come to depend on Herren's uncanny knowledge and talent as a de facto A&R guy to help the label transcend its rep as a purely IDM imprint by introducing them to some of their most popular acts, including Anti-Pop Consortium, Battles, and a young DJ out of Los Angeles by the name Flying Lotus.
Here in 2015, FlyLo is one of the biggest names in abstract hip-hop. Meanwhile, the man born Steven Ellison and the curated roster of acolytes on his own boutique label—Brainfeeder Records—are inspiring a whole new generation of DJs and beat junkies to smash their preconceptions of rhythm and piece it back together as they like. For Warp, Flying Lotus has become an event artist on par with Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin. Meanwhile, the man who brought the kid to the party found himself dropped from his longtime label.
In 2013, he launched his own micro imprint Yellow Year, yet couldn't sustain the funding to keep the hustle going. Now, fully empowered by a new deal with Temporary Residence, Ltd., who picked him up on the good word of pals Kieran Hebden and Nigel Godrich, Herren reboots the Prefuse brand for the first time since 2011's dicey The Only She Chapters with not one but three new titles. Some have criticized Herren in recent years for falling too deep into the chasm of his own wild ambitions, exploring his Catalina heritage with Savath and losing the plot of Prefuse on such lackluster fare as 2007's Preparations and 2009's Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian. With this past April's Forsyth Gardens and new full-length Rivington Não Rio, Herren returns to the essence of what made works like Uprock, The 92 vs. 02 Collection and One Word Extinguisher such essential sonic backdrops for walks along the chain-linked fences of shady, grass-patched lots in pre-"Girls" Williamsburg.
Following the meh response to his Warp swan song, it seems like Herren has reckoned that the human voice works best for his beats when it is diced into a million fragments, and he juggles the oohs and aahs of random vocalists on Forsyth highlights like "Genderations", "Still Pretending" and "Sará Teflón" with the same deftness he showed to Erykah Badu back on Uprock in 2001. Elsewhere, his ties to the old Chicago indie Hefty Records can be heard in the Tortoise-esque sway of such heady LP jams from as "Applauded Assumptions" and "Jacinto Lyric Range". "Mojav Mating Call" is the closest you will ever hear to an aesthetic compound of Prefuse, Delarosa, and Savath yet, as if he is utilizing Rivington's penultimate track to fuse them all together permanently.
Meanwhile, Herren's multi-dimensional ear remains firmly affixed to what's hot with the limited guest list space made available for these works, Rivington in particular. "Infared" is featured on both Forsyth and Rivington, and is enhanced by the stoned soul wobble of Sam Dew, formerly of the severely slept-on Atlanta art-rock outfit Cloudeater. Former Savath associate Roberto Carlos Lange of Helado Negro fame helps Herren dive back into the science of their old outfit's sole Stones Throw LP, 2009's La Llama on "See More Than Just Stars", and flexes his newfound affiliation with Temporary Residence by recruiting Rob Crow on "Quiet One", a mellow synthpop gem that's more Pet Shop Boys than Pinback. The supreme assist happens on "140 Jabs Interlude", which features the criminally, perennially overlooked Busdriver and his longtime associate Milo, who uses his "middle finger to smear shit on far-fetched idols."
The relationship between Prefuse 73 and Temporary Residence has certainly inspired the producer to peel off his best work in well over a decade, while proving exactly how well he will fit beside the likes of old pals from the Books Zammuto and Paul de Jong, William Basinski, Grails, and Rachel Grimes on one of the best label stables going right now. But ultimately, what Forsyth Gardens, Rivington Não Rio and the upcoming trilogy finale, the more ominously hued Every Color of Darkness EP, accomplish is to provide a memento on where all the long division that factors into today's beloved L.A. beat science originates. And not to take anything away from FlyLo, the Brainfeeder squad, or their advances in bringing the fusion of jazz and hip-hop to its most progressive and organic period in years, but it is rewarding to have Herren's voice at the table again, to remind the world where a sizeable chunk of this sound derived.
