Friday, March 03, 2006  

PREFUSE 73
Security Screenings
(Warp)
**1/2 (out of 4)
The Stranger, Mar 2-Mar 8, 2006

Scott Herren's copious output under numerous pseudonyms (Prefuse 73, Savath & Savalas, Delarosa and Asora, Piano Overlord, etc.) makes dude seem like he's never made a track he didn't like. The wickedly talented producer flits between pure hiphop, cut 'n' paste psychedelia, and found-sound electronica with all the focus of an ADD adult. But that's what the fast-forward button is for, and if Herren doesn't know what to cut, your ears will.

Herren calls the 17-track Security Screenings a "mini-album," but that's stretching it. Hit stop before the CD-closing "We Leave You in a Cloud of Thick Smoke and Sleep Outro," a pasty bit of ambience featuring the layered vocals of TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, and skip most of the brief incidental tracks and "Illiterate Interlude," a fake skit in which an interviewer grills Herren over the guest-star-heavy Surrounded by Silence. (Security Screenings is a partial reaction to the mixed response that CD received.) Once you've excised the chaff, you'll get some healthy Herren wheat. "Matrimonioids (For Elvin + Susana Estela)" sounds like the melancholy downtempo work on Prefuse 73's first CD, 2001's Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives. "Keeping Up with Your Quota," "Weight Watching," "With Dirt and Two TextsÑLater Version with Love" and "Creating Cyclical Headaches" (a Four Tet collaboration) have the warm, distorted ambience and time-stretched melodies that seep through headphones like aural honey. If Herren can bust open the Ritalin, and make more tracks like these, your fast-forward button will thank you. CHRISTOPHER PORTER

Posted by CP | Link |

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