What does it mean to say that you are a Scott Herren fan? In over a decade of painterly sonic experiment, bouncing from name to name, style to style, he has fashioned such a colorful body of work that even the artist himself warns against drawing connections and comparisons. Because he doesn't want to diminish his collaborators' roles, he approaches each project-- there are no "side projects" to him-- on its own terms and asks listeners to follow suit. This year alone, Herren's mark can be found on three new records: one under his high-tech Prefuse 73 moniker, another that pairs him up with Zach Hill, and, here, a return to his kindler, gentler early work as Savath y Savalas. A partnership with Eva Puyuelo Muns since 2004, the outfit has recently welcomed beat-sculptor Roberto Carlos Lange, the son of Ecuadorean immigrants, into the fold.
And the result is La Llama. Expanded to a trio, S&S have changed in ways you might not expect. Of course, there is a thickening of the mix, but it owes more to the group's new methods than to the adding of a third voice or instrument. Swirls of psychedelic haze, and not only the crisp folk heard on Apropa't (2004), lend La Llama its grainy-footage aura, a sort of blissful density that fogs up each track. While part of that creamier texture is rooted in South American acid-folk-- more on that later-- another part comes from the ragtag recording. Warmly hued, dust-flecked, intimate, it isn't hard to believe the trio put this record together in a downtown apartment. The opener, which seems to cut and paste strips of the everyday ambiance seeping into his window, hints at the warm DIY production to follow. Tinny collisions of sound, the stalled construction projects around the Bowery may serve as metaphors, depending on your mood, for the faceplanting of high finance or simply for the relentless self-fashioning of Scott Herren. Certainly its collage-like quality reflects the melting pots that, over the years, he has labored to embody in musical form, from the Iberian diaspora's origin point, to the African enclaves of northern Brazil, back to his room in the immigrant mecca of New York.
Not only is this the group's first non-studio effort, but it also serves as its debut on Stones Throw. With their yen for leftfield tunes that fall within, or just beyond, the bounds of hip hop, the label that has housed both upstarts like Koushik and stalwarts like J Dilla makes a neat fit for the soulful adventurousness of Savath y Savalas. In fact, it seemed to be a match made in crate-digger heaven. The general manager at Stones Throw, the NPR funk archeologist Egon, shares Herren's love for the scene in Recife, Brazil in the mid-1970s. For many, that may not ring a bell. Luckily, reissues-- most by the vital Time-Lag Records-- have helped to reassemble a crude picture of this cauldron of psychedelia, with three records standing out as the towering documents of the subculture that gathered around Lula Cortes. There is the summery acousticism of Flaviola E O Bando Do Sol's self-titled record, the overdriven hymn to the four elements, Paêbiru, and Satwa's suite of starlit protest ragas. But apart from the ubiquitous guitar-- strummed and picked here, sliced and diced there-- the outsize personality of Recife is tough to spot. Herren has explicitly said that the region exerts a "direct and indirect influence," just one ingredient among many, but as the record beats on, one wishes that Brazilian muscle, verve, and eccentricity left a bigger mark on La Llama's mostly safe and Starbucks-ready aesthetic.
Instead of a jolt of funky Brazilian mysticism, what we witness in the record is a simpler and surprisingly fluid evolution: a handful of strands from Herren's past work woven together. Not every strand was worth his effort, though. For one, the shift in Apropa't, the sophomore effort that hipped devotees to Muns' feather-light delivery, continues here with the chanteuse's return to the fore. But her contributions add little color to the songs, as her airy monotone tends to stick to a mechanical, lullaby delivery, revealing her razor-thin range on "Barceloneta" and amid the sleepy strums of "Pavo Real". On the other hand, that record's often soothing blend of Catalan folk and Chicago post-rock lives on, far more vividly, in the billowing "Me Voy" and the brooding guitars of "No Despierta".
Though La Llama never plants itself on a bed of breakbeats, at its best, it does revisit the hopscotch editing of Herren's Prefuse 73 work. It is an attitude toward composing that also guided his essentially instrumental Savath debut as well as 2004's Mañana. And this persistence of the adventurous, anxious side of Herren (arrayed against his rustically downtempo Apropa't/Golden Pollen side) seems to coincide with the arrival of Roberto Carlos Lange, a musician who cut his teeth in the late-night peñas of Miami before crafting backcloths to gallery installations, and whose avant-garde spirit can be felt on the best tracks. From the flutter and fuzz of "Carajillo", the Verocai-via-Varese frenzy of "Una Cura", or the spooky animalism of "Pajaros en Cadaques", one thing is clear. A good deal more Lange and a good deal less Muns would have brought out the best in Scott Herren.
