prefuse 73 reads the books ep
8 tracks in 22 minutes where scott herren combines his trademark mutant cutups to the music of the books. from being a highlight of the recent prefuse 73 album (reviewed here), this one off track, 'pagina dos' has been expanded and drawn out into eight parts like an old school future sound of london project. and, of course, it works brilliantly. in a nutshell, there are snippets of gorgeous music and harmonies by the books (cellos, banjos, and other such old traditional musical instruments), all spliced and diced with all manner of tv noise and voices, real world ambience to make something very fresh and traditional sounding, yet totally modern.
where scott works stops and the books music starts is sometimes impossible to decipher, but it becomes more easy in the ep's highlight, the fifth variation, ('pagina cinco'), where the acoustic guitar strums, and violin are far more predominant in the mix and are left virtually untouched other than a nice easy drum loop and a few laptop midi'fied sonics. quite rightly so this is the centrepiece of the ep and will make people put down their four tet albums and totally fall back into the prefuse 73 groove. amazingly this is followed by .. ahem .. part 6, that is even better ! the melody is just sublime, and is once again allowed to breath and take shape with minimal of technology interaction, and when scott does start his tinkering, it's so wonderfully subtle that even hardcore techno-phobes wont be able to complain.
a fine fine side project, that will probably get more airplay than the album proper, as the combination of the humane warmth of the books is beautifully juxtaposed against the normally cold, scientific futuristic sonics to make a very special end result.