Prefuse 73 - Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian
The return of the mad scientist of hip-hop
Under the alter-ego of Prefuse 73, Guillermo Scott Herren releases another batch of avant-garde hip-hop, and it’s the musical equivalent of a man-made virus escaping a laboratory, wreaking havoc on our preconceptions. Nothing in the hip-hop world comes close in terms of enthusiasm to experiment: beats are dissected at random, loops are recklessly chopped up, and tracks stop as abruptly as they begin. The grooves are still there, but they’re moved away from simple drums and bass into the realms of jazzy abstraction; Periodic Measurements of Infrequent Frowns is a perfect example of the way in which noises can be made funky, as is Punisher. Snippets of old-school grooves are pitted against Varese-style orchestras, in a fashion that evokes Frank Zappa’s rock ‘n’ musique-concrete masterpiece Lumpy Gravy. It may be a somewhat overwhelming first listen, but Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian promises to be rewarding to revisit.