Prefuse 73

Guillermo Scott Herren records most prominently under the name Prefuse 73. His inventive reshaping of hip-hop beats formed a link between the Mo’ Wax catalog of the 1990s and the beat-driven movement that later flourished in Los Angeles. Early full-lengths such as Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives (2001) and One Word Extinguisher (2003) established him as a key figure on the Warp roster throughout the following ten years. Subsequent projects have appeared on smaller imprints including Temporary Residence and Lex. Although Herren periodically steps outside hip-hop to favorable effect, his signature method of building intricate rhythmic layers and processing voices—whether drawn from samples or supplied through partnerships with artists such as MF Doom and Broadcast’s Trish Keenan—has stayed his most distinctive asset. That approach has kept evolving, evident in the dense, abrasive soundscapes of the 2018 album Sacrifices and the soundtrack-oriented focus of 2024’s two-part release New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2.

At his mother’s urging, Herren studied multiple instruments during childhood. A decisive shift occurred in high school when he first encountered a sampler, prompting him to begin crafting tracks at a studio in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Although work for up-and-coming commercial rappers proved unsatisfying, the income allowed him to acquire the sampling drum machine and sequencer he had already mastered. His first appearance on record came in 1997 under the Delarosa moniker, coinciding with contributions to the Too Pure band Seely. The year 2000 marked the beginning of an extended relationship with Warp Records, initiated by Folk Songs for Trains, Trees and Honey—the debut album from his Savath & Savalas project—and the Prefuse 73 EP Estrocaro. Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives arrived the next year, its Prefuse 73 debut featuring a modest roster of vocalists and rappers whose performances received treatments comparable to those applied to Herren’s sampled sources.

Following a standalone single for Chocolate Industries with Mos Def and Diverse, plus another four-track Warp EP, Herren delivered his second Prefuse 73 album, One Word Extinguisher, in 2003. Among its guests was Tadd Mullinix, known as Dabrye, who had earlier assisted in founding Herren’s Eastern Developments label. Later that same year Warp issued Extinguished: Outtakes, a concise EP containing twenty-three beats and samples that spanned roughly thirty-five minutes. The third proper Prefuse 73 album, Surrounded by Silence, appeared in 2005 and included contributions from Ghostface Killah, Blonde Redhead, and El-P. Three months afterward came Reads the Books, an EP recorded with the band the Books. Security Screenings followed in 2006; although Herren classified it as an EP despite its full-length duration, it featured limited outside input, limited to Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden and TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe. Herren began concluding his primary Warp period with the intricate collections Preparations (2007) and Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian (2009).

Entering the next decade, Herren devoted greater attention to collaborative work that eventually reached dozens of entries. He lent production, remixes, and appearances to projects involving Zach Hill (under the Diamond Watch Wrists name), Oneohtrix Point Never, and TV on the Radio, among others. His final Warp album, the atmospheric 2011 set The Only She Chapters, further distanced itself from hip-hop through prominent lead vocals supplied by Trish Keenan, Shara Worden, and Zola Jesus. After a period of inactivity, Herren reemerged with several 2015 releases on Temporary Residence Limited: the twenty-fifth installment in the label’s Travels in Constants EP series, the full-length Rivington Não Rio (with appearances by Busdriver and Helado Negro), and the EPs Forsyth Gardens and Every Color of Darkness. During the same summer and fall he also tracked material with MC Michael Christmas under the name Fudge; their playful debut album, Lady Parts, surfaced on Lex Records in 2016. Sacrifices, a streamlined yet richly textured Prefuse 73 album for the same label, followed in 2018. Additional output included the informal beat collection Fudge Beats (2019) and the abstract, occasionally experimental Failing Institute series, which circulated solely in digital form between 2020 and 2021. In 2024 Prefuse 73 issued two successive volumes of New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2, with the first arriving in March and the second in June. Both drew primarily from cinematic sources, citing Morricone scores, library music, and lounge-inflected jazz as reference points.