Webster Hall, NYC
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
Interview by Patrick Billard
Illustration by Adam Walko
As beat-oriented music has grown in popularity in the past decade,
superstar DJs and electronic music producers are increasingly playing
the roll of full-fledged rock stars. This means dealing with groupies,
giving tons of press interviews, and hopping continents performing in
front of multitudes of screaming fans.
Although he hates to admit it, Scott Herron of Prefuse 73, Savath+Savalas
and Delarosa+Asora finds himself in such a predicament. He says the
rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle is wack. He’d rather be at
home in his studio making beats for any of his multiple musical personalities.
As Prefuse 73, Herron has forged a quirky brand of cut-up sample-based
hip-hop that strips the art form of it’s lyric elements. There
are vocals but they’re chopped, spliced and re-sequenced and become
another layer of instrumentation, rather than the focal point of the
music. As Savath+Savalas and Delarosa+Asora, Herron combines his expertise
in electronic music production with his knack for instrumentation, creating
a very personal, moody one-man post-rock band.
When we met at Webster Hall on a cold, rainy night in March, Herron
had just got off a cross-Atlantic flight from Spain, where he currently
resides, to do a four-date mini-tour with some Warp Records labelmates.
He was delirious from lack of sleep, extraordinary time-zone differences
and jet lag. His synthesizer wasn’t working. His set wasn’t
as polished as he would have liked. Yet he still found the time and
energy to wax poetic on hip-hop, electronic music and the creative process
in general.
How’s it going?
Good. Bad. I’m tired man. I need some sleep. I don’t like
my set. I want to go back to the hotel to finish it. It just kind of
dissipates. It doesn’t do anything. Usually I try to wrap everything
up somehow. This way it doesn’t really do it.
How do you come up with your live sets?
They are always different. When I’m playing alone, I try to change
it, especially if they’re for a tour. I don’t know why because
they are all in different places, but I try to switch it up. When I
play with other people it’s more rehearsed. You have a way to
interact. But I don’t like the end of what I have tonight.
It’s down to the line!
Yeah, this whole shit is down to the line.
Explain the name Prefuse 73.
I just coined it. I first started writing it, even after my graffiti
days. When you are addicted to graffiti you just constantly write. So
Prefuse, I just liked the way it flowed. It’s something I think
I did, I think I coined. It’s that era of [jazz] fusion from ‘68
to ‘73.
I first heard you on the Lily of the Valley compilation on
Schematic Records. I think your track stood out the most.
Really?
Yeah, a lot of that harsh, experimental electronic stuff doesn’t
do much for me.
Yeah, I was really surprised when Schematic were the ones who called
me. I gave them a demo, and they called me. I was like, they like this
shit?
Do you like their sound?
(Laughs). I don’t really listen to that kind of music, and I never
did. That era of my music is the way that it is because I was experimenting
with my MPC [sampler] and it got kind of lumped in with them.
Would you say that after touring with them that you picked
up some influences of that sound?
They showed me a lot of shit. They exposed me to a lot of electronic
music that I was totally not up on. They were like, “You know
this? You know this?” The electronic music that I was up on wasn’t
really their thing. Electronic music to me at the time was bands with
electronic elements in them.
For a while Warp and Schematic seemed to have a reputation
for cutting-edge dance music. Now Warp is putting out different stuff.
But it seems like a lot of that experimental electronic stuff sort of
came and went.
Yeah, I mean, you could hear (becoming extinct) when it was coming out.
How many times are you going to hear a crunchy beat with atmospheric
chords? How long can you listen to the same thing? How can that genre
exist and not expand? All that shit runs together to me. I’m not
hating on it, but I don’t like it.
Tell me about your songwriting process with Prefuse. It sounds
like it takes a lot of work.
It’s starts with something different every time. I just put stuff
together. It’s really frantic and it’s not that graceful
of a process. Once things start coming together the extra attention
is added. But as I make it its just information gathered.
Does it come in fits of inspiration?
Sort of. The songwriting I do in Prefuse vs. Savath+ Savalas is completely
opposite. With Savath+Savales I can sit down with a guitar, write a
song and compose it. Prefuse starts out with anything. It’s all
sample based. It’s minimal live playing. I only allow myself to
use so much [live instrumentation].
Do you tend to sample yourself?
Yes.
Do you sample from records? Anything goes?
Anything, definitely.
How much midi programming do you do?
None. I did some midi on the EP I did, 92 vs. 02. I ran the bass midi
from my MPC to the keyboard. But fuck midi. I don’t like it. I
always lose the data. I just play live.
Do you ever DJ?
Yeah. I don’t consider myself a DJ, but I DJ. I’ll play
records if I’m asked to.
Celebrity DJ?
(Laughs) I don’t know about that! I like to play records. I’ve
just never been a really good DJ. I’ve done it in so long and
I just suck at technically DJing. I can cut better than I can mix.
Were you a b-boy growing up?
I was a straight-up hip-hop dork growing up, until I found out who Slint
was and then I got into other music.
What was it like working with Tommy Guerrero?
I don’t know! It was a FedEx endeavor. I asked him if he wanted
to collaborate on my record because he had asked me to collaborate on
his. But he had to go to Japan two days from when we spoke, so he wrote
a song that night and sent it the next day.
The drummer from Mercury Program is on the record.
I don’t know them at all!
How did that happen?
I went to their show because my friend Danny, this kid that runs Counterflow
Records, was putting them out. I was like, “Oh wow, Danny is doing
something that’s not hip-hop.” So they played in Atlanta
one night when I was in Atlanta. I went to the show and I watched and
I was like, “Cool, cool, this is great.” And then I went
up to the drummer and I was like, “Man you’re dope! Can
I get your drum track?
Did he know who you were?
Yeah! And I was like, “I’ll make it worth your while.”
That’s a Mercury Program track, that drum track. He said just
give me credit. So I just put his name on there.
Guest musicians seem to be the theme of the record.
That’s the hip-hop cliché! For every non-formulaic thing
you do, you have to balance it out with a formula.
So hip-hop heads can swallow it better?
Nah, fuck them man. Just to balance out what I’m doing for myself.
When are you going to throw in comedy skits or martial arts
samples?
(Laughs) I don’t know if I can do that.
Would you say you make hip-hop?
With Prefuse there’s no other way I would ever describe it.
When did you start chopping up vocals, doing the thing that
has become your trademark?
This album is dedicated to not doing that anymore.
If you are trying not to do the vocal chops anymore, where
do you see you music heading?
The vocal chops, when I did it I was trying to make my version of ‘80s
edit records like Mantronix and bass music – sliced up shit! I
was taking elements from early ‘90s and mid-‘90s hip-hop
and now and blending it all together. That’s where the whole slicing
came from. It didn’t come from fucking IDM. That’s what
I was trying to do, and now I’m just moving on. So, on the album,
there’s still a few little micro cut-ups of vocals but that’s
just to say goodbye to the style. I don’t want to make a part
two of the same record.