(Warp/Inertia)

Over the past several years fomer Atlanta (and now current Barcelona resident) Scott Herren has emerged as one of the most prolific and diverse producers currently operating in leftfield electronic music, somehow balancing his angular experimental hiphop excursions under the Prefuse 73 moniker with parallel ventures into acoustic instrumentation and electronica as Savath & Savalas and Delarosa & Asora respectively. In the aftermath of the collapse of his working relationship with Savath & Savalas’ Eva Puelos late last year, this latest third album from Herren as Prefuse 73 shows him shifting his work under this name up a few notches and bringing in a large number of vocal and instrumental collaborators for ‘Surrounded By Silence’, a record that features the largest number of guest appearances yet, out of all his albums as Prefuse 73. Rather than coming across as the most conventionally ‘hiphop’ of his albums so far however, ‘Surrounded By Silence’ shows Herren employing his signature digital mangling on his various vocal collaborators, treating the MC contributions of guests such as Aesop Rock, Camu, Beans and Ghostface as raw sonic material to be twisted and reshaped around the stuttering beats and samples.

Opening track ‘I’ve Said All I Need To Say About Them’ opens things on an edged note, with a voice defiantly dismissing the opinions of ‘biters’ (a perceptible theme that pops up repeatedly on this album) giving way to a vast undulating backdrop of scissoring hiphop beats, furiously scattered and hyper-edited vocal fragments and digital blips and buzzes, as jazz-tinged live drums and swelling bass chords wander through the mix. After this kaleidoscopic opening, first single ‘Hideyaface’ shifts things slightly more back towards conventional hiphop, with the Wu-Tang’s Ghostface and Def Jux’s El-P trading verses smoothly over a swinging backdrop of chiming instrumental samples, warm fretless bass and scattered and reassembled syllable fragments, while ‘Ty Versus Detchibe’ treats Tyondai Braxton’s soul-inflected vocals as just another sonic texture to be twisted and reshaped through Herren’s machines, a stuttering acoustic guitar line making its way through the asymmetical rhythms alongside thick buzzing keys and a storm of sinister glitches and whirs. ‘Pastel Assassins’ approaches the soft-focus acoustic stylings Herren’s explored in the past as Savath & Savalas but pushes things through a chaotic blip-hop filter, with Claudia and Alejandra Deheza’s gentle vocal harmonies gliding over a stop-start backing of machinelike buzzes, dubbed-out trailing electronics, cut and shifted acoustic guitars and dry, cracking hiphop beats, before ‘Pagina Dos’ takes things down through bright echoing mandolin textures, as clashing rhythms and even a sputtering harmonica intersect around The Books’ airy reshuffled vocal harmonies.

‘Now You’re Leaving’ pushes things towards angular leftfield RNB, with Camu’s smooth soul croon shifting into a tough MC flow over plucked strings, wandering synth pads and tight clicking hiphop beats as faded-out samples trail and spin in the background, before ‘Sabbatical With Options’ casts Aesop Rock in an edged, spiteful mode (“I’m gonna start the ignition / I’m gonna punch you in one direction.”) over a rolling backing of acoustic guitar, bright chords and crunching hiphop beats, sampled traffic horns circling around Aesop’s verbal flow as metallic-sounding cymbals twinkle in the foreground. ‘Just The Thought’ meanwhile offers one of this album’s most stellar hiphop-centric moments, with the Wu-Tang’s GZA and Masta Killa both putting in an appearance, eerie ticking stopwatches giving way to a stuttering beatbox rhythm that’s bolstered with thick, rolling sampled drums that provides a dark-edged rhythmic backdrop for some slicing handclaps, gunshot-esque sounds and sinister wandering organ tones.

‘La Correccion Exchange’ sees Herren going head-to-head with DJ Nobody and fashioning a lush, cinematic instrumental moment that cuts and scatters bluegrass fiddles over washes of female vocal harmonies and twanging banjo, vast sampled beats and handclaps cutting and crashing their way through the airy instrumental textures and turntable spinbacks, before ‘Morale Crusher’ introduces Beans in a short hiphop snapshot that captures the former AntiPop Consortium member in fine verbal form, dropping his hyper-precise syllable flow around curving violins, digital stutter and bleeping electronics. Finally, ‘And I’m Gone’ brings this album to a close, Herren cutting and reassembling elements of UK postrockers Broadcast, Café Tacuba and his own Piano Overlord alter-ego to create a hypnotic outro that shifts deftly from disorienting manipulated vocal harmonies, childlike indie delicacy, and finally deep psychedelic jazz-rock, a fittingly epic outro for this vast and diverse colllection.

‘Surrounded By Silence’ is a stunning third album from Scott Herren under his Prefuse 73 moniker that manages the not-inconsiderable feat of raising his explorations into leftfield hiphop to an ever higher level than that set by his previous outstanding albums ‘Uprock Narratives’ and ‘One Word Extinguisher’ – a deft accomplishment, if there ever was one. Rather than diluting the overall picture as many similarly guestspot-packed albums are prone to do, the extensive collaborations here show Herren pushing his explorations as Prefuse 73 into new uncharted areas, treating the various vocal and instrumental guests as raw material to be reshaped at will and pushed through his trademark stuttering and hyper-dense, detailed filter. Given his stellar first two albums, it was always going to be a mean feat for Herren to top his past accomplishments as Prefuse 73, but on ‘Surrounded By Silence’, he’s not only done it, but made it look easy at the same time. Highly recommended.

Check out http://www.prefuse73.com and http://www.warprecords.com.