When I entered the immense Webster Hall dome on New York's Lower East Side, there were short, tinny bursts coming from the stage monitors. Bent over a spread of pots and faders was a lanky, scruffy figure who looked a little like Jesus; I later recognized him as Scott Herren, the Atlanta-born sonic engineer responsible for the glitched-out catharsis of Delarosa and Asora, the thick organics of Savath and Savalis, and the precision-sliced hip-hop of Prefuse 73. As I stood alone, in the center of this terrifying annulus of sound, my torso surrendered to the inevitable slamming whenever a stray fifteen seconds of material from the new One Word Extinguisher LP came thundering through the hall. "Smart bombs of the mind," I thought, "Strafe me."
Before the show, Scott Herren-- just in from Barcelona and soon headed to Chicago on a grueling promotional schedule-- couldn't have been more distracted: he told me to start the interview while still soundchecking. When I finally got him to a threadbare couch backstage, he pulled a long white shroud over his head and stared blankly at the wall, waiting for my questions. He looked like he hadn't eaten, slept or pissed in twenty-four hours, and was too exhausted to do anything about it. I sat silent for a few seconds, wondering where to start.
Pitchfork: What was the first record you owned?
SH: Probably Thriller. I played it on this shitty stereo, one of the first one-piece stereos-- it wasn't a component system, but it was still a piece of shit. It was from K-Mart, but it looked modern.
Pitchfork: You record under a lot of names-- is Scott Herren your real name?
SH: Nobody will ever know! [laughs diabolically]
Pitchfork: I was intrigued by just the sound of your pseudonyms-- Delarosa and Asora, Savath and Savalis-- before I ever heard your music. It seems like there's some dialogue built into the names.
SH: When they started they reflected each other. One contributed to the other, because Delarosa was more electronic and Savath was more live. I quit doing Delarosa, and now Prefuse and Savath are each very focused. I split those up, but I think they're sort of parallel, tonally or emotionally. They're all linked somehow, unconsciously.
Pitchfork: What does Prefuse 73 mean?
SH: It means pre-fusion jazz between 1968 and 1973. There was a lot of exploration and integration of new sounds that parallels hip-hop now. Anything by Alice Coltrane, Joe Henderson, or Pharaoh Sanders... if you look at the back of all the records, you see it's the same people. It all makes sense.
Pitchfork: How did you start out with rap?
SH: Thriller. And the same sort of doorway opened up to me with roller-rink, breakdancing type shit and 80s edit records, like the vocal chops on the first record, like 80s "Bukabakabakabukabaka," and everything is super-minimal, and had space and is totally edited like "Bakabukabaka..." Old school dirty south and booty shake shit, just the way stuff was edited back then, all the bass music and edit records... that's what inspired me. I wanted to make edit records, but bring all the shit that happened afterwards into it, hip-hop from the early 90s through the present day.
Pitchfork: You get a lot of shit for disrespecting MCs.
SH: I get shit from people that don't talk to me. It's always people that are writing and hiding behind a pen. They never ask me where I'm coming from, what I listen to, who I am, and I'm like, "Thanks for making people that don't know me think that kind of shit."
Pitchfork: You also get lumped with the glitch crowd.
SH: That came afterwards, and somehow got tagged onto what I do, but I wasn't out to do that, I just got grouped with it. The random things that I do in my music aren't computer-generated-- it's not like I make my music on a computer. I've got a computer tonight, but it could be anything, it's like a fucking tape player.
Pitchfork: So what do you use in the studio?
SH: With Prefuse it's MPC [a sampler] and turntables. I keep my live playing limited because I don't want my projects to intertwine. I want to keep everything separate and focused.
Pitchfork: How does the live Prefuse differ from the studio Prefuse?
SH: It's just sloppier when I recreate it live, so maybe it's more fun to listen to. I hate playing live, it's just not my steez at all... I can do it but it doesn't do much for me. After a couple shows, I wish I could go home and work on my music.
Pitchfork: Do you get a lot of gear-head groupies after the show?
SH: Totally, they're like, "What program did you use?" and I'm like, "I don't use a program." They ask all these complicated questions and I'm like, "Do you know how stupid I am? I don't have the capacity to answer your question."
Pitchfork: So what's new at your label Eastern Developments?
SH: It's basically just me and my friends sloppily running this label made to put out our friends' music. The newest records are Kopernik and a Daedalus EP, with Ammon Contact and Ahmad Szabo coming soon. We're just trying to push those records, because we don't have a ton of money, we don't have major distribution. I live in another country, so other people have to keep up with it. I started it, but now I just bring people to the label and kind of oversee. If somebody needs me to do something, I'll do it.
Pitchfork: What's it like living in Barcelona right now as an American?
SH: A lot better than living here [in NYC] as an American. The American opposition has no voice over there, from a CNN standpoint. They'll show protest everywhere in the world, but for the US they'll show old footage of like four people standing in front of the White House.
Pitchfork: Opposition is a lot stronger over there.
SH: It's true, but at the same time they don't want the world to know that there are people who oppose the war inside the US. The same way the US doesn't want to talk about its casualties.
Pitchfork: Has the war made it into your music at all?
SH: The new album was done before, but definitely-- it's hard to think about anything else, it's pretty overwhelming. I've been on a press tour for two weeks, and I couldn't talk about anything else.
Pitchfork: I have a friend who came to one of your NYC shows, and said he was shocked the moment you started up that you existed for other people, because your music had touched him so intimately.
SH: That's what any musician would like to do: hit someone's soft spot. That's what I want to do, I want to translate what I'm doing emotionally. I usually base my songs on people. I hope that people can take it in and make their own connection, to something they feel good about. I'm not trying to make people think about bad shit.
Pitchfork: One of your Delarosa and Asora records is called Agony Part 1, so it can't all be good.
SH: That was a little less personally inspired, more based on some of the sounds on the records that resembled [agony]. But there was always an uplifting point.
Pitchfork: I just broke up with my girlfriend a couple weeks ago, and yesterday I pulled out Agony for the first time in two years. "Paz Suite II" brought me to the verge of tears.
SH: Ah, dude. Damn, that's really cool. The funny thing is that One Word Extinguisher is a total break-up record. I was going through a long breakup through the whole record.
Pitchfork: But it took you over a year, right?
SH: [uncomfortable laughter] The never-ending battle... it just lasted a long time. I locked myself in my room working, disconnected the phone, bummed out as fuck. Typical break-up steez: you can't talk to anybody, you feel like shit, and it's the only thing you have to express yourself.
Pitchfork: Who guests on your new album?
SH: Diverse, Mr Lif, Tommy Guerrero, Dabrye and Daedalus.
Pitchfork: Delarosa's dead, but is anything on the horizon for Savath and Savalis?
SH: I'm almost finished with the next full-length, which is totally different. It's all me and my roommate in Barcelona, singing songs in Catalan and Spanish. And I'll play anything I can find in front of me: guitar, bass, Rhodes, whatever...
Pitchfork: Last question, have you met any animals that like your music?
SH: My dogs used to like it, but I lost them in the breakup.
Pitchfork: Oh dude, that's horrible.
SH: Never mind that.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/interviews/p/prefuse-73-03/
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