PREFUSE 73 - NEW STRATEGIES FOR MODERN CRIME VOL. 1 & 2

Released: 28/06/2024

The follow-up to 2018’s excellent Sacrifices, the new album from Prefuse 73 – AKA the Atlanta-born, New York-based Guillermo Scott Herren – sees quite a major development in his sound, for while the jazz element in Herren’s cross-breed smushing of hip-hop and electronica has for the most part played an occasional minor role, on New Strategies … it’s brought fully to the fore. 

A concept album of sorts, which plays like a soundtrack to an imaginary crime film or TV show (song titles here include ‘Clean Up Scene Apprentice’ and ‘Wrong Suspect’), the album is a remarkably fluid work that is continually mutating, and in which motifs and passages rarely repeat. It masterfully marries organic Miles Davis-esque experimentalism (think Bitches Brew) with soundtrack touch points such as John Barry’s The Persuaders, Lalo Schifrin’s Bullit soundtrack, and US jazz composer Gil Mellé’s scores for Columbo, and subtle electronics and vintage synths – to such as degree that I have no idea what is live ‘played’ or sampled. I honestly would have put my money on it being solely the former, so organic-sounding is it, were it not for the press release’s mention of the LP’s influences including “musique concrete … and beat-tape music”. All of which, really, is a moot point, for this double LP is undoubtedly Herren’s finest achievement, a jaw-dropping masterwork of instrumental electronic hip-hop.