Prefuse 73 - Rivington Não Rio (2015)

First new album in 4 years. One of the true pioneers of modern electronic music. Features guest collaborations with Sam Dew (Wale, Roc Nation,Jessie Ware), Rob Crow (Pinback), Milo & Busdriver (Hellfyre Club), Helado Negro. It has been 4 years since Guillermo S. Herren released anything significant from his most famous and respected moniker, Prefuse 73 (though he has certainly kept busy with live shows, collaborations, and remixes). That's a long time for virtually any artist, but it's an eternity for Herren, whose first three Prefuse 73 albums dropped in the span of under 4 years. As if to make up for lost time, 2015 will see the release of not one, but 3 major works from Prefuse 73. After several albums that saw Herren progressively drift away from the beatmaking prowess that made him synonymous with emotionally resonant, damaged hip-hop, he s found himself reinvigorated. Rivington Não Rio revels in the kind of compassionate complexity that marks Prefuse 73's greatest works, with a profound new element added to the mix: Patience. Herren's ability to marry the manic to the melodic has always been uncanny, but here it feels downright magical as the songs inhale with his trademark sense of urgency... then exhale in longer, more revealing breaths. The prismatic textures that have long been a staple of Prefuse 73 are bound to beats and melodies with the spirit of hip-hop and the subtlety of modern minimalism. The album's guests treat the material with a hushed respect: Roc Nation songwriter and Jessie Ware collaborator Sam Dew turns "Infrared" into a sublimely soulful, dimly-lit portrait of inverted R&B; Milo & Busdriver's vicious, rapid-fire verses contrast a pastoral downbeat to brilliant effect; and elsewhere, Pinback's Rob Crow and Latin electronic-folk crooner Helado Negro navigate splintered tropics with passive grace. As a stand-alone album, Rivington Não Rio ranks extraordinarily high in the Prefuse 73 canon. As a centerpiece to an epic triptych that includes the Forsyth Gardens and Every Color of Darkness EPs, it's a new peak from a pioneer who appears to only just now be hitting his prime. For an artist who has played an undeniably integral role in the careers of so many influential artists, it's not just refreshing to hear him return to top form... it's revelatory.