Next week, Prefuse 73 kicks off a tour with the Gaslamp Killer as support. The opening act will be indie-pop duo VoicesVoices; their debut album, Origins, was produced by Prefuse and drops January 26 on Manimal Vinyl. VoicesVoices will also join Prefuse during his live set.

For all those who think Prefuse just sits on stage and tweaks his laptop, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. He’s toured with a quartet for the past few years, and the combo delivers muscular renditions of his glitch-hop hits. And, of course, the unpredictable Gaslamp Killer always delivers the banging beats sets. It’s worth checking out.

• 1/19: Music Hall Of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
• 1/20: Middle East, Cambridge, MA
• 1/21: Sound Lab, Buffalo, NY
• 1/22: The Summit, Columbus, OH
• 1/23: Eagle Theater, Pontiac, MI
• 1/24: Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL
• 1/25: Triple Rock Social Club, Minneapolis, MN
• 1/26: The Aquarium, Fargo, ND
• 1/28: Palace Lounge, Missoula, MT
• 1/29: Nightlight Lounge, Bellingham, WA
• 1/30: Neumo’s, Seattle, WA
• 1/31: Holocene, Portland, OR
• 2/02: Slim’s, San Francisco, CA
• 2/03: Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA
• 2/05: Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2/06: Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom, Denver, CO

(all dates) w/VoicesVoices

For the next two weeks, Prefuse 73 will perform a few shows around the South, including some opening gigs for Tortoise. It ain’t much, but he plans to make up for this winter with a full-on tour featuring Dam-Funk and the Gaslamp Killer (!).

• 9/16: Pour House, Charleston, South Carolina
• 9/18: Club 828, Ashville, North Carolina
• 9/19: New Earth Music Hall, Athens, Georgia
• 9/20: Bottletree, Birmingham, Alabama
• 9/21: Thirsty Hippo, Hattiesburg, Mississippi
• 9/22: Spanish Moon, Baton Rouge(never been), Louisiana
• 9/24: Ace’s Lounge, Austin, Texas
• 9/29: Firebird, St.Louis, Missouri (1)
• 9/30: Beaumont Club, Kansas City, Kansas (1)
• 10/01: Waiting Room, Omaha, Nebraska (1)
• 10/02: Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (1)
• 10/03: Voices Warehouse Gallery, Dubuque, Iowa (1)

(1) w/Tortoise

Scott Herren has had a very busy season, releasing three albums in less than five months. Before he heads out for a European tour this summer (and a U.S. tour in the fall), he’ll complete the cycle with Prefuse 73′s The Forest Of Oversensitivity. Set for release via Warp on June 2, the five-track EP will be issued digitally and on vinyl — sorry, no CD.

• 1. “Overkill Choir”
• 2. “Relief Choir”
• 3. “Preparation’s Kids Choir (can’t dance no more version)”
• 4. “Always Alone Choir”
• 5. “Simple Loop Choir (bad memory version)”

Scott Herren will release the next Prefuse 73 epic, Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, through Warp Records on April 21.

Much like his last Prefuse album, Preparations (and unlike much of his early Prefuse output), Herren won’t have any guests, save for an appearance  from German beatmaker Dimlite and, it seems, L.A. DJ/promoter/troublemaker the Gaslamp Killer. After Ampexian drops, he’ll follow up, as usual, with an EP of loose ends titled The Forest of Oversensitivity sometime in the summer.

The new Prefuse album kicks off a busy year for Herren that includes a new Savath y Savalas album and a project with drummer Zach Hill (Hella, Marnie Stern) called Diamond Watch Wrists. More news on those projects shortly.

But first, here’s a bit from the press release:

Guillermo Scott Herren (aka Prefuse 73) is nothing if not proven. It’s hard to think of a name that carries as much weight in both hip-hop and avant-rock circles as Prefuse 73, who in the past year alone has been asked to remix TV On The Radio, Pelican, BLK JKS and Cornelius, not to mention his early collaborations with School of Seven Bells and Battles. These interactions have clearly helped to shape the evolving Prefuse 73 sonic aesthetic, which has expanded to include Herren’s twisted visions of prog-rock, “machine funk” and global psychedelia.

For Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, Herren rejected the idea of straight digital recording and instead went the much more intensive route of recording to analog Ampex tape, giving the album the sound of a lost tape of exploratory studio musicians from the not-too-distant past. In addition to the recording process, Ampexian also differs in its composition, existing as a tapestry of tracks of varying lengths and moods, albeit with a remarkable linear flow and, of course, unmatched rhythmic bump.

In a January MySpace post dedicated to a recent citation from BetterPropaganda.com as “Artist of the Decade,” Herren dropped these jewels about his state of mind pre-Ampexian:

Honestly, at this very moment I have been doing nothing more than micro managing all of these upcoming releases for this 2009 year and not one aspect of doing this can I consider easy – I’m dropping possibly more than I’ve ever released at once. This has brought on such a ridiculous amount of administrative work from coordinating the concepts behind where and what makes sense regarding: (errgh) budgets, all the artwork, patience(I try), press related things we must do, organizing tours, one offs, letting friends know that I’m just crazy busy but still love them the same.

• 1. “Periodic Measurements of Infrequent Smiles”
• 2. “Hairy Faces (Stress)”
• 3. “Parachute Panador”
• 4. “NoNo”
• 5. “Punish”
• 6. “Half Up Front”
• 7. “Sexual Fantasy Scale”
• 8. “DEC. Machine Funk All ERA’s”
• 9. “Get ‘Em High”
• 10. “Ampexian Tribe of a Lesser Time”
• 11. “When Is A Good Time?”
• 12. “Fountains Of Spring”
• 13. “Whipcream Eyepatch”
• 14. “Regalo”
• 15. “Rubber Stems”
• 16. “Oh Is It”
• 17. “Four Reels Collide”
• 18. “Fringertip Trajectories”
• 19. “Violent Bathroom Exchange”
• 20. “Nature’s Uplifting Revenge”
• 21. “Yuletide”
• 22. “Simple Loop Choir”
• 23. “No Lights Still Rock” (feat. Dimlite)
• 24. “Gaslamp Killer Feedback Text”
• 25. “Digan Lo”
• 26. “Preparations Kids Choir”
• 27. “Pitch Pipe”
• 28. “Periodic Measurements Of Infrequent Frowns”
• 29. “Formal Dedications”

Prefuse 73
Preparations
Warp

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Scott Herren’s fourth full-length album as Prefuse 73, Preparations, begins with a whirlwind of rapid-fire edits, crackling samples, and dervish melodies. It’s as if he were casting off the malaise of his last release, the middling Security Screenings, in favor of the brash experimental techniques that first made him famous among beat-heads and electronic geeks alike.

Among its high points is “The Class of 73 Bells,” a collaboration with School of Seven Bells that wafts among the clouds as the Deheza sisters’ harmonies interplay with Herren’s whistling toot-toot chimes. Elsewhere, “Prog Version Slowly Crushed” stomps triumphantly like a disco track at 78 RPM. And “Girlfriend Boyfriend” meets cute with a nice acoustic guitar melody before an eroticized wash of static arpeggios overcomes it.

Somewhere after its mid-point, however, Security Screenings fades. Its final tracks, particularly “Preparation Outro Version,” are well-made but lack the verve of the earlier cuts. They feel mechanical, like jam sessions. Or perhaps, at little over 45 minutes, Preparations is too much of a good thing?

Nevertheless, Preparations is a nice return to form for Herren, even though it might not win back the Justice-obsessed indie-rockers who hastily dismiss him as yesterday’s news. Prefuse 73 may not be the proverbial shit anymore, but he continues to develop as a unique and talented artist worth paying attention to.

By most standards, Scott Herren has already had a great year. He dropped a new edition of his Savath & Savalas project, Golden Pollen, to favorable reviews; and has seen his glitch-hop style validated through mimicry by countless imitators. But the original is still one of the best, as they say. He’ll prove it on October 23 with Preparations, the latest chapter in his Prefuse 73 saga, and on an upcoming fall tour.

Herren’s travelmates on his international adventure will be Blank Blue, the new vocal project from DJ Nobody and singer Niki Randa. School of Seven Bells, which features vocalists Claudia and Alejandra Deheza and musicians Benjamin Curtis and James Elliott, will also open.

The U.S. tour dates are below.

• 11/15: Crowbar, Tampa, FL
• 11/16: Studio A, Miami, FL
• 11/17: The Social, Orlando, FL
• 11/18: Beta Bar, Tallahassee, FL
• 11/19: Bottletree, Birmingham, AL
• 11/21: Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta, GA
• 11/23: Black Cat, Washington, DC
• 11/25: First Unitarian Church Sanctuary, Philadelphia, PA
• 11/26: Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY
• 11/27: Paradise Lounge, Boston, MA
• 11/29: Mohawk Place, Buffalo, NY
• 11/30: Magic Stick, Detroit, MI
• 12/01: Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL
• 12/03: The Badlander, Missoula, MT
• 12/05: Nightlight Lounge, Bellingham, WA
• 12/06: Neumo’s, Seattle, WA
• 12/07: Holocene, Portland, OR
• 12/08: Slim’s, San Francisco, CA
• 12/09: Troubadour, Los Angeles, CA

www.prefuse73.com
www.myspace.com/prefusion73

Scott Herren is arguably one of the most influential producers of the past decade — if not necessarily in hip-hop (he’s got a lot of competition in that department), then most certainly in electronic music.

So why all the haterade? Perhaps because, over an 8-year career, he’s made a lot of music under many guises. Not all of it’s great, and some of it is pretty dismal (I particularly didn’t like Security Screenings). His predicament reminds me of J-Dilla, another prolific producer who drew a lot of criticism around 2001-2002. This was four years before he died and became deified by the hip-hop faithful. Hopefully Herren won’t have to die to get his props.

So here comes another Herren adventure, this time under his most successful pseudonym, Prefuse 73. Preparations, set for release on October 9 via Warp Records, arrives only five months after Golden Pollen, his recent album as Savath y Savalas. The man is currently planning a U.S. tour, but in the meantime here’s the track listing.

• 1. “From the East Intro”
• 2. “Beaten Thursdays”
• 3. “Aborted Hugs”
• 4. “The Class of 73 Bells” (feat. School of Seven Bells)
• 5. “Girlfriend Boyfriend”
• 6. “Smoking Red” (feat. John Stanier)
• 7. “Prog Version Slowly Crushed”
• 8. “Noreaster Cheer”
• 9. “Let It Ring”
• 10. “17 Seconds Interlude” (feat. Tobias Lilja)
• 11. “I Knew You Were Gonna Go”
• 12. “Pomade Suite Version One”
• 13. “Spaced + Dissonant”
• 14. “Preparation Outro Version”

www.prefuse73.com
www.myspace.com/prefusion73