Prefuse 73: Surrounded By Silence
Who are the biters? Prefuse 73’s Scott Herren certainly has had enough of them. He takes criticism of his music personally, flipped out over the leaking and subsequent downloading of his new album, Surrounded by Silence, and is probably seeking out the Dec offices at this moment for the first two clauses of this sentence. The LP’s first track, titled “I’ve said all I have to say about them,” opens with a sample declaring, “fuck the biters.”
Fortunately, he has said all he has to say about them, quickly establishing that he’d rather let his creative abilities speak for themselves. And his abilities are ample; Herren’s technique for crafting beats differs greatly from most other producers. Unlike an RJD2 or a DJ Shadow, Prefuse 73 doesn’t allow cohesive samples. There’s no sped up soul samples on a Prefuse 73 track, no beat grabbed from a funk hit–or not, at least, anything you’d recognize. Instead, Herren chops everything up into tiny little pieces, letting the rhythm and melody and harmonies arise from the interplay of short, one or two beat samples. Sounds distort, become something apart from even themselves when he throws them together into this fashion. Even on the larger scale, he keeps the same plan, and blips of staccato notes suddenly bite into fuzzed out cacophony. Vocalists and guest instrumentalists typically find themselves just one more element for Herren to play with, and might find their contributions chopped up or, at the very least, worked low in the mix. The result–odd, considering how layered and complex the rhythms are on most tracks on the album–is that these incredibly dense songs wind up evoking wide-open landscapes. Surrounded by Silence does, in fact, drown the listener in a soundscape rather than propelling him forward.
The collaborating artists get more airtime on Surrounded by Silence than on past albums: almost every track has a guest vocalist of some sort. Ghostface, El-P, Aesop Rock, Masta Killa and GZA all contribute raps. Ghostface and El-P’s “Hideyaface” winds up being one of the best songs of the year so far, all Ghostface free association (Why does he mention the Newark Star-Ledger?) and El-P free aggression taking on–who else?–the biters. The Masta Killa- and GZA-driven “Just The Thought” runs around one of the more straightforward beats Prefuse 73 has put together, a bouncy concoction that doesn’t last nearly as long as it should. Unlike in the past, their vocals are mostly untouched; it seems that Herren who “didn’t want to record rappers rapping over a beat” on his first album, Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives, has come to terms with just how damn good it sounds.
But the other tracks–based around work with Blonde Redhead, the twins Claudia and Alejandra Deheza, and Tyondae Braxto, amongst others–find him chopping samples again like a sushi chef,* doing what he does best. Listen to the swelling horn on “Minutes away from you,” the way he keeps holding off the high point from the listener until just the right point. Listen to the looping strains of “love” on “Pastel Assassins,” the way he holds the song in stasis, refusing any sort of release for so long. Scott Herren knows what he wants, and he’s willing to work for it.
So why worry about the biters? They only push him to the next level, only make him focus on the vocals and his ability to produce a beat as much as his ability to create abstract landscapes, only force him to put himself on the line. The truth of the matter is that Scott Herren needs the biters, as much as he doesn’t want to admit it. He’ll never really be done talking about it, and that’s probably a good thing.