Pitchfork

Guillermo Scott Herren will revive his Prefuse 73 alias this fall for the new album Preparations, out via Warp on October 23. As Herren mentioned when we chatted with him in March, it's a double album... but only if you buy a physical copy. That's right: as an added incentive to support your local record shop, the digital version of Preparations will not come with the second disc. And you'll be missing out, because that second disc is called Ensembles and is, as promised, a collection of modern classical compositions composed and played by Herren using mostly cello, flute, piano, bass, and clarinet.

As Herren said, "One side of the record is totally beats, and [on] the other side, I'm notating the beats, and they all sound like modern classical music. I feel like half the kids that buy it are just going to throw the other CD away and keep the beat side. I don't know what to expect."

Preparations' first single is "The Class of 73 Bells", featuring School of Seven Bells. It will be released as a limited edition 12" on September 18 in the U.S. and September 17 in the UK on Warp. School of the Seven Bells is the new band of ex-Secret Machine Benjamin Curtis, and ex-On!Air!Library twin sisters Claudia and Alejandra Deheza. (Claudia has also worked with Herren under his Savath & Savalas guise and as A Cloud Mireya.)

Another exciting guest on Preparations is John Stanier, drummer for Warp labelmates Battles. He pounds on "Smoking Red".

Though Herren unfortunately had to leave his Savath & Savalas tour with Jose Gonzalez, he has a fair number of dates scheduled this fall as Prefuse, and even more are forthcoming.

Savath fans have a little something to look forward to as well. Though there's not much information about the release just yet, but Herren recently hit the Savath MySpace blog to announce that Savath and Soft Circle's Hisham Bharoochaa are preparing a limited edition split 12" and digital single.

"Class of 73 Bells":

A1 The Class of 73 Bells [ft. School of Seven Bells]
A2 Smoking Red [ft. John Stanier]
B1 En Blanco (A Prefuse/Epstein Production)
B2 The Classical Sounds of 73 Bells

Preparations:

01 From the East Intro
02 Beaten Thursday
03 Aborted Hugs
04 The Class of 73 Bells [ft. School of Seven Bells]
05 Girlfriend Boyfriend
06 Smoking Red [ft. John Stanier]
07 Prog Version Slowly Crushed
08 Noreaster Cheer
09 Let It Ring
10 17 Seconds Interlude [ft. Tobias Lilja]
11 I Knew You Were Gonna Go
12 Pomade Suite Version One
13 Spaced + Dissonant
14 Preparation Outro Version

Ensembles:

01 For Her Non-Place
02 Preparation One
03 Thorough Light
04 Spacious and Dissonant Part 2
05 Pitu
06 Preparation Two
07 Over Ensembles
08 The Last
09 Sunbeamstress
10 Humidity Interlude
11 The Ground We Lift
12 Preparation Three
13 Let It Ring Ensembles
14 Out We Will Go
15 Prepared as It Was

Prefuse 73 dates:

09-07 Boulder, CO - Boulder Theater *
09-20 London, Ontario - LOLA Festival
10-14 Dublin, Ireland - Whelan's
10-15 Leeds, England - Room 237
10-16 London, England - Scala
10-17 Manchester, England - Apollo 2 #
10-18 Brighton, England - TBA
10-19 Reims, France - Electricity Festival
10-20 Paris, France - Le Divan du Monde
10-21 Brussels, Belgium - VK
10-23 Fribourg, Switzerland - Fri-Son
10-24 Geneva, Switzerland - L'Usine
10-25 Munich, Germany - TBA
11-25 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church Sanctuary

* with Telefon Tel Aviv
# with Battles