Take It Back to Where It All Began

By Landon Moblad | Photo by Kevin Henderson

With the release of several one-man projects with names like Savath + Savalas, Piano Overlord and Delarosa + Asora, Scott Herren has been exploring everything from downtempo ambience to Spanish-influenced folk. His most well-known alias, however, comes in the form of his experimental hip-hop/electronic work as Prefuse 73. With albums like Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, One Word Extinguisher and 2005’s collaboration loaded Surrounded By Silence, Herren continues to expand hip-hop’s borders, jumping from attention-deficit MPC jams to providing beats for Aesop Rock, Diverse and Ghostface, and manages to appeal to a diverse selection of fans. Herren interrupted lunch in his New York apartment to answer questions for Synthesis about his recent time in Spain and his new album, Security Sceenings.

So are you still primarily living in Spain?
I’ve been living in Barcelona off and on for about five years. I actually would like to move on from living in Barcelona and move somewhere else. But my apartment there is just unbelievably beautiful compared to my place in New York, which is really small. I’m about to have a baby in like six months, and I want my kid to grow up in Spain because I think the education system and a lot of other things are just way better. I’m pretty much just gonna disappear. I’ll still do my thing, but I’m gonna go back to living there all the time like I used to.

Had you been there before you moved? Was it difficult for you to adjust?
Well my dad is from there, but when I moved, it was my first time being there. For the first six months I lived there, I refused to speak any English, just to immerse myself. I think that’s the rudest shit when I see some tourist speaking English to someone at a restaurant or something and demanding that they speak the language. I mean, I think that’s rude in any culture. So I want my kid to be able to speak well in English, Spanish and Catalan.

The Spanish influence can definitely be heard on the last couple Savath + Savalas releases. Do you feel like it has changed the way you approach your Prefuse material at all?
No, not at all. I mean, people say it, they’ll be like, “I hear on this part that Savath + Savalas has crept into Prefuse world,” and I’m like, “where?” Maybe chord changes I choose or something, but I would do those chord changes with anything. I’ve actually been listening to more rock shit and getting into more complex changes and sounds as far as composition is concerned. So, I would say that more than anything, the rock stuff has gotten into both sides of my music.

Did you get into hip-hop early on?
The way I came up on music was my older sister was way into all the DC punk shit, but I kinda grew up in a place where hip-hop was it. You’d get your ass kicked for being punk rock. But I liked them both so much, so I grew up ignoring and blurring the lines. I never saw the difference, and I’m glad I had that restraint because no one really ever fucked with me growing up for the kind of music I listened to.

With the experience of living in both the US and Europe for extended periods of time, do you notice any major differences in regards to how Prefuse 73 is received?
It’s really weird in the UK. I mean on one hand, I tour a ton in the UK and my label is based out of the UK, but that’s my least popular place for selling Prefuse records. I don’t think anyone ever really caught on to the idea of, “yo, to me, this is just some pure-ass hip-hop.” I mean, the abstract element, the edits. People had been doing that in the ‘80s. I’m way behind, this is just classic shit. But people were just like, “This is just too bugged out,” or whatever. The hip-hop heads didn’t get it and it was too hip-hop for the electronic people. So, in England, it never really caught on, but in France and other places in Europe, it blew the fuck up. And then in Japan, Surrounded By Silence was on the charts forever, even though that’s my least favorite Prefuse album.

So you weren’t happy with the end result of Surrounded By Silence?
I liked it. It was definitely an accomplishment, let’s put it that way. That was just the biggest DIY project that I could have ever done in my life, and it really burnt me the fuck out. It was just really fucking hard trying to coordinate 20 people and paying for almost the entire thing myself. And ultimately, it was really misconceived because no one knew what the fuck I was doing. I was trying to explain to people, “This is not Handsome Boy Modeling School.” It wasn’t like, “oh, here’s this guest,” or, “hey, here’s someone you’d never hear on a hip-hop album.” I was trying to make a natural, organic meeting of all these different styles.

Security Screenings is coming out less than a year after your last album. Is there any sort of thematic element to this album that made you want to get it out quickly?
Thematically, I can sum it up as all those things I was saying about Surrounded By Silence and doing it so DIY and meeting that breaking point of making that record. You can sum it up and say that’s what Security Screenings is all about, but in a sort of humorous way. This is the first record I’ve really done where I can listen to it and sort of smile and bump it in a different kind of way. There was a happier overtone to this one, if that makes any sense.

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