Pitchfork

If there's one thing we can count on from Prefuse 73's Scott Herren, (now going by his full name: Guillermo Scott Herren), it's that he always has a ton of collaborations and side projects going almost simultaneously. So far this year, those projects are limited to three: a new Prefuse 73 album, a new Savath & Savalas album, Golden Pollen, scheduled for a June 19 release on Anti-, and a full-length collaboration with Japanese MC Twigy, tentatively due out in May.

We caught up with Herren recently to talk about these three projects as well as his relationships with hip hop, his collaborators (including Battles' Tyondai Braxton), and the language barrier.

Pitchfork: What's your relationship with Tyondai Braxton?

Guillermo Scott Herren: He's one of my best friends. I took Battles everywhere with me on the last official Prefuse tour, for Surrounded by Silence. I took them from Japan to Italy to Spain, just because I really believed in them, and I wanted to show the world what they could do. I wanted to bring them to a Prefuse audience because I thought we had a lot of similarities, and Tyondai and I always-- when we're talking about our own music-- we always find these ties. Our influences are very similar, even though they come out different. And I was like, "There's no way my crowd is not going to respond to these guys. They're just as banging as any beat." Anybody that brings any kind of heat with hip hop or whatever-- if they get what I'm doing, they're going to get what they're doing.

Pitchfork: Was the response good?

GSH: Yeah, it was great. I think it opened a lot of people's heads up. They were just like "Holy shit!" when they would drop their beats.

Pitchfork: Have you heard the full-length, Mirrored, yet?

GSH: Yeah, I'm supposed to be working on a remix, but instead I'm working on the Prefuse record because there's so much work to be done with it.

Pitchfork: Do you know which track you're remixing yet?

GSH: Not yet, but I'm sure it will be fitting. It will be fun. This Prefuse shit is just out of control. There's so much to do because it's two records, and they're totally different. My head's got to split in half and do two different things.

Pitchfork: How are they coming along? There's no release date set yet, is there?

GSH: The timetable is definitely "TBA." The goal that we've made with each other, me and Warp, is that I would try to turn it in by June, and thank God for Warp being supportive and calling me to make sure I'm okay. Like, "You've got a lot of work, are you okay?" and I'm like, "I'm cool, I'm cool. My brain hasn't melted yet."

Pitchfork: When did you realize that you wanted to feature mostly your own vocals on Savath & Savalas' Golden Pollen?

GSH: Never. I had worked with Eva [Puyuelo], and she wasn't a singer either but I heard her voice and thought it was so beautiful I was like, "You've got to sing." She has a deep voice, and I was like, "I'll do all the falsetto stuff above you and they're going to think that's you anyway." So I'm singing through half of that album [the last Savath & Savalas album, Apropa't], and nobody even knows it's me. So I was like, "Well, now that I'm not in Spain..."-- 'cause I'm in New York-- I was kind of forced to start singing by myself, because I had nobody around me. So I spent this whole year by myself, writing songs, and I was like, "All right, fuck it. I'm not a singer. I'm just going to do it." I was trying to find stuff with crazy harmonies, because that's something I'm ultimately attracted to, and of course, I'm listening to a lot of my old records, going back to them.

Pitchfork: What kind of crazy harmony stuff did you find?

GSH: Man, everything as typical as Fleetwood Mac and Crosby, Stills & Nash to more obscure folky stuff like Linda Perhacs and the more hipster borderline folk, whatever you call it. [I was] just listening to how people build around each other. It didn't matter who it was. I'm in a place right now with music where everything can come in, and I can learn something from it. I was looking at stuff I could never see myself listening to, even metal shit. I would be listening to really hard shit and the way they would have to harmonize their voices or do things with their voices to make it work within that realm of music. But ultimately, going back to the old records, old Brazilian records and old Spanish records.

Pitchfork: Golden Pollen is in Spanish, right?

GSH: Mmhmm.

Pitchfork: Did you grow up bilingual?

GSH: I mean, I've been able to speak it, but I didn't grow up rocking it my whole life. I wasn't in a situation that I needed to until I got to Spain, and then I was in a whole different realm. It [is] a part of my culture, but in the scene where I grew up, [I] wasn't forced to apply it at many moments.

Pitchfork: Are you pretty fluent now?

GSH: Oh yeah. Having lived in Spain and all that stuff, yeah. The main thing with this [Savath & Savalas] record-- I made a pact with some of my friends in Spain and actually from Venezuela before I left. They were like, "Next time you sing, you need to drop your castellano accent and just try to sing universally in one tone." In the castellano accent, you stress certain words differently. You use your tongue a lot more, and you keep your mouth closed tighter. So this time, every time I sang, I had to be very conscious of what I was saying, because I wanted it to come from a universal place.

Pitchfork: What originally got you into the idea of wanting people to hear music from your culture, and other cultures in general? That idea also makes sense in the context of the work you did with Twigy recently.

GSH: For myself, it was more self-involving. I was trying to be like, "Okay I can take my music here, because it's a part of me. So why not express it and try to do the music that I want to hear and integrate language, where it's an instrument and not such a novelty, being 'rock en Español'?" It's just a way for me to transcend something, and I don't want to make a novelty of it. I've been asked, "Why don't you sing any in English? Why don't you do a version in English? Why don't you write this down in English?" And I'm just like, "Do you know how offensive that is? Why don't you just let it be what it is and just listen to the music?"

Pitchfork: There's an assumption when non-U.S. artists achieve success in America that, now that they've made music in their own language, they can make music in English, as if English were the universal language. But it's sort of backwards to assume that.

GSH: Absolutely. Historically, languages break apart. There is no universal language, really, especially within music. Don't people say that music is the universal language?

Pitchfork: It's also strange that people would ask why you don't record English versions of the Savath & Savalas songs, because so little of your music has included lyrics to begin with. It's not like you switched from recording in English to recording in Spanish.

GSH: Yeah, and if I sing those songs in English, the one's I'm singing, you'd be like, "What in the hell is going on?" It wouldn't translate. It's meant to be how it is, for sure. Isn't there a Charlotte Gainsbourg album that's in French mostly? I bring her up because I was in Turntable Lab-- which is primarily a spot to buy hip hop records-- I'm just in there talking to some friends who work there, and I'm just noticing how many cats are picking up her record. It made me go, "Damn, heads want to hear some different shit," and you look at people's records, like El-P's record, who he collaborates with. There are all kinds of people transcending the lines of where there is to go and what there is to buy, and I think heads are opening up more. I listened to the new CocoRosie, and that sounds like some other shit.

Pitchfork: It seems like so little of your recent work has been within the genre of hip hop, but is that still a base that you can come back to?

GSH: Yeah, definitely. That is my platform. I feel like a dinosaur in hip hop, because I'm not-- all the club and party rap that's out, all that shit is cool, but I don't go to the clubs. I don't fit in at a club. I don't make any sense there. That's past my age, past my prime. Even when I was of that age group, I was really attracted to reflective hip hop. I was so into the first Nas record when it dropped. I don't know if that makes me seem like I'm 80 years old, but that was the shit to me, just listening to him speak rather than going, "Get the fuck up in there! Nanalala!" I don't want to be screamed at to dance. If I'm going to dance, then I would just dance. I consider myself, especially this year just having focused on writing and shit, I consider myself really out of it. But Nas' [last] record, I don't know how good or bad it did with critics or people, but man, there's a lot of intelligent shit to be heard on that last record he dropped.

Pitchfork: Hip Hop Is Dead?

GSH: Yeah. I think that has a lot of relevance, and if it caused any controversy, it shouldn't. I mean, it should definitely make people reflect on things. People are so quick to misconstrue things, and I think that's the perfect example, like, "Fuck him, how can he say that shit, man?" It's like, "Well, what do you do with it to help it live?" I think that he brought it on that record, and a lot of the shit that he said makes a lot of sense. I think there are a lot younger cats-- I'm not going to blame it all on younger cats, because there are a lot of younger cats that are a lot smarter than me, but I think it's a good thing to expose them to a different focal point. He's sitting there saying, "The way I used to form my riches... I look back at it, and it's embarrassing." The way that he would use his money and flaunt it and how he didn't handle his shit right when he was getting paid would embarrass him now. Kids that are getting advances now for some shit that go and blow their money and don't pay attention to their taxes and all this stuff, it will come back and haunt you really bad and really fast. You gotta be on top of your shit, and that's all he's really trying to say. Like, "Okay, be more responsible," and that's it. That's just one of many messages you can hear throughout the whole shit. Whether or not people like the album, there's a lot of relevant shit on that record.

Pitchfork: Are there any MCs on the new Prefuse records?

GSH: Man, it's a toss up right now. I don't know. Right now I'm just gathering my beats together. I have a million beats, and I don't know what I want to do. It's definitely not going to be MC-laced. It's not going to be Guest Stars-o-Rama. Surrounded by Silence was something I wanted to do, and I did it and bam, it's done. I wanted Blonde Redhead on the same record as Ghostface, so whatever. This record's going to be more focused on the music and pushing myself to do new things and not get stuck in things I've done in the past. 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.

Pitchfork: But they're being sold together?

GSH: I think so. That's also unknown. I mean, we're strategizing on the daily, like, "What the fuck are we doing, and why does it have to be so confusing?" Well I want to do this, and it would be cooler to do it with Prefuse beats and turning them into some more corny sounding shit rather than doing it with Savath. It'd be more predictable with Savath, maybe.

Pitchfork: Are you still making beats, or are you in the editing process now?

GSH: I'm making them, and I make them the same way still. They start out on the MPC, but when I go into this notation phase, I grab all the instruments and recreate it. But I recreate it where people have to really tune in to recognize, "That's that beat! Holy shit! And okay, that's that vocal sample right there. And that turned into a whole ensemble of cello," or whatever the instrument might be.

Pitchfork: How are you recording the classical side? Do you have an orchestra, or are you just using samples?

GSH: The classical side is almost done. I played it all myself. It comes from guitar, flute, clarinet, cello, and vibes. It's built around a lot of found sounds too, but it's not like, "Ooh weird." It's very traditional, in a sense. I play it for people and say, "What is this shit? How do you interpret it?" And they're like, "This sounds like some sad-ass soundtrack." So I guess it's like soundtrack music with no budget for a movie.

Pitchfork: How did you meet Twigy and end up producing his album?

GSH: It was a random situation. Hashim [Bharoocha] is my friend [and] my interpreter in Japan every time we went for press. He recently moved to L.A., but he coordinates projects for a label out of Japan called Rush. They were going to do a compilation, and they wanted me to do all the beats for it. So I was like, "Okay, I'll collect a bunch of beats and give them to you." Then this guy Twigy comes out of nowhere-- I have no idea who he is-- saying he wants to rock over the whole shit, because he's never gotten a beat CD where he liked the entire thing. And I'm like, "You like that beat CD?" I'm curious, like, "What the fuck's wrong with you man?" He wanted to do some different shit, and it was not so different that he couldn't do what he does. But he certainly took some of the most out-there shit that I don't even listen to, and rocked over it his way. He picked, like, 19 out of 23. He just got on them, and he got his crew, Aloe Blacc, Murs, the Grouch, and Del [tha Funkee Homosapien]. All those guys got on it and killed it. Whatever the beats sounded like, they did far more than I would ever expect them to do. They rocked way over me. I was like, "Wow, this song is good!"

Pitchfork: Has that experience rekindled your interest in producing for or with rappers?

GSH: I'm pretty content with what I'm doing now. I want to do more stuff with Claudia Deheza, who is of other relations to me, the mother of my child and whatever else. We aren't together, I have no romantic relationship with anyone, but I love her as if she were my wife. We're really tight. Me and her work well together. There's stuff that DJ Nobody's working on right now that's sick, and we always have stuff that we're trying to work on together. But we're not a very productive duo. We have a lot of ideas, and we just never get to it.

Pitchfork: You are pretty busy, though. I think you can be forgiven for having enough other projects.

GSH: Yeah, [and] me and Tyondai are always like, "We're gonna do this project, a record of all these crazy harmonies." It's like it's all in the works, but you've gotta wait for all that stuff to happen. And it does happen if you stay focused on it. But MC-wise, I don't know. Like I said, I'm out of it right now. I caught myself listening to Biz Markie a couple weeks ago. I was just dissecting it, how hip hop used to be so selfless, how somebody like Biz could come out and rock and be so, not self-deprecating, proud of what he's doing-- it's funny, but it wasn't a joke. He was just dope. And everybody back then had some kind of appeal like that.

Pitchfork: What if Nas approached you and said he wanted to do his next record with all Prefuse beats? Would you drop everything to do that?

GSH: Fuck yeah, man. I would be like, "Okay, come to my studio. We'll do a triple album." If it was Nas, if it was anybody like that, I mean, of course. I'm just trying to think now, who would even want to work with me? I don't even know what I have to offer them. If somebody wants something from me, I'm always surprised. I do have people approach me and ask me for beats, but I'm always shocked that they even want it. I'm like, "You want to get down over this?"

I found out after the fact-- after I'd given Twigy all those beats-- that his first group was with Eye from the Boredoms. I was like, "Man, that guy is seriously O.G. as fuck." I was sort of starstruck for a couple of days. He went from that to becoming one of the biggest MCs in Japan and going, "I'm going to rock over Prefuse beats." Of course, to other people, it sounds crazy. They hear it with a lot of Japanese thug rap over it, but you get used to it. It's so funny to listen to because the brain-- you start to transcend. You're just so impressed, like, "Man, they're bringing it their way." You can't go, "I hate Japanese rap or rap in a foreign language. I don't like rap in Spanish." It's like, "Listen to it. Don't just listen to a clip and go, 'That sucks.'" It sinks in, like all music.

Pitchfork: With all the Savath stuff in Spanish and having these Japanese rappers gravitate to the Prefuse beats, do you think that's because a certain language fits a certain style of music better?

GSH: I don't know about that. That's a hard question, because those guys were turning tracks that were pretty slow into club bangers. A lot of those things sound straight for the club, and when you hear them without [Twigy] on them, they don't sound like that. They're mega-slow, with indie rock samples underneath. Allowing so many different kinds of people [to] get on top of Prefuse beats, I've watched them totally change the course of the way they sounded. I guess it's all about how the MC or singer brings it to the beat.

Pitchfork: In your own description of Golden Pollen, you said that you didn't want to be seen as an inhuman beat machine. Do you feel like that's how you were portrayed when Prefuse first started getting popular? Is that why you chose to pursue the Savath stuff, to redefine your image or approach?

GSH: Oh, no. Image and music, I separate. It doesn't matter to me how people see me or don't see me. I just think that Prefuse for a while was starting to become this outlet, this machine. It came more as a joke. People were like, "This place is a factory, dude. You just knock shit out." And I was like, [crying] "Yeah, but that doesn't mean I'm not a human!" [laughs] I don't want people to interpret it as inhuman music, because any sublabels that people have placed on Prefuse, any sort of glitch-related whatever, computer blip-hop shit, have no relevance. It's been an MPC since '95 I guess, whenever I got my MPC. I've tried to keep a human element and anything random that happens, happens randomly, because I don't like to work in a normal way. I would rather record something being thrown at the wall or dropping and then have that in, and that ends up sounding like something else to somebody. I don't know how to explain it, but it wasn't a concern over image. It was more a concern over them not just going, "Fuck this, [Savath & Savalas] is just another Prefuse mechanism."

Pitchfork: I read that you originally wanted your son to speak English, Spanish, and Catalan. Now that you're in New York near him and Claudia, instead of in Spain, how has that worked out?

GSH: I would love him to, but the only way that's going to happen is if he's able to go to a trilingual school like they have [in Spain]. But here, he's automatically going to speak castellano and English, because his grandparents, Claudia, and me already agreed that everything we say to him, we'd say twice, when he's young, in both languages, so he catches on. Everything he has is bilingual. He can decide [whether] to tell his mom or dad what he wants in Spanish or English.

Pitchfork: Is he going to sing on any Savath records any time soon?

GSH: Hell yeah, man! As soon as he can get on the mic, he's going to kill it, I hope, better than me. We want to buy him an MPC and shit and put him in a room and let him go crazy.

Pitchfork: How old is he?

GSH: Not quite a year, but he's growing pretty rapidly.

Golden Pollen tracklist:

01 In Tro
02 Apnea Obstructiva
03 Paisaje
04 Concreto
05 Mi Hijo
06 Te Amo....Por Que Me Odias
07 Estrella de Dos Caras [ft. Jose Gonzalez]
08 Olhas
09 El Solitario
10 Faltamos Palabras
11 Era Tu
12 Vidas Animadas
13 Tormenta de la Flor
14 Ya Verdad
15 Tiempo
16 End