‘It’s a bit crowded’. This statement,
possibly attributed to a journalist, lifted from Illiterate
Interlude, sums up not only the work of Guillermo
Scott Herren under his Prefuse guise, but also partly
what this companion mini-album to last year’s
massive Surrounded
By Silence is all about. Conceived and recorded
during the tour that followed the release of the album,
Security Screenings is announced as a reaction
to the promotional work and interviews Herren found
himself entangled with.
If the list of contributors here is not as extensive
as that found on Surrounded
By Silence, Security Screenings features
the much talked about collaboration with Four
Tet (Creating Cyclical Headaches) and concludes
with a piece recorded with TV On The Radio’s Babatunde
Adebimpe. Here though, Herren returns to the largely
instrumental sliced up hip-hop he excels at, yet the
mood is, at least in part, strangely calmer and more
composed than on previous records, at times evoking
the sun-drenched ambiences of Savath & Savalas.
Security Screenings slots in rather perfectly
alongside its predecessor. A logical evolution from
the intricate soundtracks created for Surrounded
By Silence, the focus is once again on Herren’s
surgical dissections of samples and beats in the name
of the groove and his constant reinterpretation of a
genre that, in its ugly mainstream incarnation at least,
suffers from prolonged overindulgence.
Stripped of the clouds of vocal contributions, the Prefuse
sound sparkles and shines freely once again. When in
laidback mode, tracks lazily meander around quirky samples,
airy sound formations and comatose beat. But it is when
things heat up that Herren truly comes to his own. Meticulously
dissecting rhythmic patterns and sound sources, compressing
pneumatic bass lines and lacerating vocal samples into
superbly effective vignettes, ranging from just a few
seconds to a mere three-and-a-half minutes at the most,
Herren piles up tracks and sounds at an impressive rate
and, in true Prefuse style, continuously blurs the boundaries
between genres. The term hip-hop has always proved reductive
when it comes to this project, as it only partially
defines what Herren sets out to achieve. The structure
might find some lineage with the hip-hop pioneers of
the early eighties, but the man injects far more than
he takes, and it is once again very much what defines
Security Screenings.
Surrounded By Silence,
undoubtedly Guillermo Scott Herren’s most accomplish
record to date, proved how relevant the Prefuse 73 sound
is and demonstrated that it could work equally well
as vocal support. Now reclaiming his natural ground,
Herren proudly shows to his detractors that he has lost
nothing of his panache. Four
Tet and Babatunde Adebimpe might be landing a helping
hand on a couple of tracks, but it is Herren who dictates
what’s happening. Security Screenings
certanly is a return to more common Prefuse grounds,
but it only highlights the more uncompromissing side
of Herrren's talent that some may have missed out on
last time round.
4.7 |
