Prefuse 73
The Only She Chapters
Release Date: Apr 26, 2011
Genre(s): Electronic, Rap, Club/Dance
Record label: Warp
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Album Review: The Only She Chapters by Prefuse 73
Fairly Good, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 80%%
Beat innovator Guillermo Scott Herren slows things down with The Only She Chapters, bringing a healthy dose of spook and enigma to recent electronic offerings. Blessed with a thriving sense of melody, the album is evocative but elusive in sound and concept, hewing close to weird cultic parameters known only to the artist himself. The songs are somber and meditative, clearly crafted by a master, but the boundaries Prefuse 73 normally annihilates remain mostly in place here.
Based on rating 6.4/10
Considering Guillermo Scott Herren may have about five side projects at any given time, perhaps the most surprising thing about The Only She Chapters is that it comes under the Prefuse 73 brand. Previous Prefuse records highlighted the glitch-hop production style that Herren pretty much perfected on 2003's One Word Extinguisher; here though, Herren hews closer to the psychedelia of his recent collaborations with Zola Jesus. Prefuse's works are often inward-focused and clipped, with melodic ideas constantly shooting off in different directions-- usually in the same song.
Based on rating 6/10
Following a busy recording year in 2009, Scott Herren focused on collaborative projects in 2010, flexing his production muscles via dates, remixes, or cameos with everyone from Zach Hill to Oneohtrix Point Never to TV on the Radio. The Only She Chapters continues the familial feeling, with a wealth of features for female vocalists, which on the surface makes this Prefuse 73 record sound more like it came from Herren’s Savath & Savalas project. Still, it shows his production style has changed slightly.
Based on rating 4/10
I hate to be the one to break this, but anyone expecting the mad and frantic cut-and-pastes featured in previous works by Prefuse 73’s Scott Herren is bound to be a bit disappointed with his latest offering, The Only She Chapters. This new album has been described elsewhere as a kind of concept record, one that only features female vocalists in the mix (though I swear I can hear some very heavily processed masculine voices deep on the album’s first track) and one that features songs that all begin with the words “The Only ... “.
Opinion: Excellent
On 2009’s Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian, Prefuse 73’s Guillermo Scott-Herren spanned 29 earthy tracks to deliver one of the freshest sounding electronic albums of that year. Songs like “No Lights Still Rock” bounced with splashing energy and playful tones that highlighted a banner year for the music producer/musician. The sounds he created were memorable and it aided in reaching an epic high.
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