preparations is the latest album from scott heren under his glitched up electronic moniker.

previously prefuse 73 albums were often stuffed to the max with all manner of well known names hidden amongst the fucked up sonic mess, whereas for this concise 46 minute release the focus seems to be melody as opposed to crunchy chaos.

there are a few guests here and there (school of seven bells, and battles drummer john stanier), but dealt with in a far more subtle manner than previously. subsequently, this revised approach means that melody and lush instrumentation are allowed to be enjoyed, as opposed to the sensory overload that used to occur when trying to decifer what message the excess of cut up vocals are trying to tell the listener.

while the approach may be slightly different, the album is a truly wonderful listen, and probably the one prefuse 73 album that i will return to the most. swamping the underlying real orchestrations with the trademarked processed crunched up beats and studio production tweaks, the heavily layered computer music is at times overwhelming, often there is so much detail in the music, that even after many many listens in, and you will still be hearing new elements to be absorbed and enjoyed.

of course, the single, the class of 73 bells, is a serious highlight, the combination of sirens type vocals, tubular bells, and epic strings makes for a compelling spine tingling listen, as does the explosion of sample beauty in spaced + dissonant, proving that alongside fellow audio magicians amon tobin and four tet, scott is one of the current masters at the art of modern music manipulation.

there may be those that still like to believe that the prefuse 73 is a hip hop based project, i would like to suggest that this album is a clear indicator that scott has jumped off the hip hop ship, and now releases forward thinking, listenable, yet experimental music that just so happens to incorporate hip hop beats from time to time.

oh, and for those quick off the mark, i believe the first issue of this release comes with a bonus disc of the original source material that scott used, in other words the actual orchestral parts that were created for scott to play around with, which from the sounds of their twisted offspring on offer on the album proper, must be rather sublime.

 

more detail : here