Prefuse 73: The Only She Chapters

The last time Guillermo Scott Herren checked in as Prefuse 73 was on 2009’s Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, the knottiest, most wound-up-sounding album of his career. The tracks sounded ever glitchier: more splintered, almost ADHD. The Only She Chapters is a different thing—from Ampexian, and from the mutant hip-hop of earlier albums like 2001’s Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives. On Chapters, Herren is going for big, winding, and sonorous; even mini-tracks such as “The Only Test To Score” and “The Only Recollection Of How Things Change” have the effect of slow motion. (And yes, all the titles here start with “The Only.”) The instrumentation—whether played, programmed, or sampled; a little of each typically goes into Prefuse 73’s recordings—is given room to stretch its limbs. Sonically, a lot of wind seems to sweep: On “The Only Trial Of 9000 Suns,” he deploys languid vocal-stitching (long a specialty) with a crawling, hypnotic meld of percussion, while “The Only Way To Find” uses much the same blueprint, but adds clock-ticking guitar harmonics that add more richness to the dense mix.