Prefuse 73

If some of the beats sound familiar on Extinguished and you’re starting to think Scott Herren has run out of ideas already, note that this selection of pulverised snares and vocals are snippets and alternate takes from the producer’s brilliant One Word Extinguisher. Given his hands-on approach to freestyle music-making and fiddling with noises until he hits a sweet spot, there’s no wonder why Prefuse probably has hundreds of beats that never see the light of day and several cuts that, to quote one of the tracks, are "for some but not for him.” Extinguished is a messy record, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to the erratic approach that Prefuse 73 tends to take with his releases. Some of the jams on this companion record to One Word Extinguisher could be seen as full-fledged tracks that will sit nicely with the rest of his catalogue, but for the most part these 23 tracks are mere seconds long that never really go beyond a dope break beat that found its way to the cutting room floor. When you take the entire album and treat it as one long freestyle session then it’s quite grand, but shouldn’t really be evaluated as a fully thought-out release. These are table scraps from Prefuse 73’s MPC that happened to find their way onto our plates, and even though there are several sweet spots on Extinguished you can’t help but remember what gorgeous results rise from a true Prefuse 73 project.