Producer and composer Guillermo Scott Herren has often taken his Prefuse 73 moniker on diversions away from the glitchy electronic hip-hop that he pioneered on his earliest albums. His two-volume album series New Strategies for Modern Crime is one of the best of these diversions, using a mix of shadowy live instrumentation and electronic elements to create songs, vignettes, and incidental music modeled after soundtracks for underground films and library music made in the 70s at the height of the movement. Where New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 1 took more of a film noir angle with organic instruments and sauntering jazz undertones, Vol. 2 is decidedly more futuristic. "Wagon Talk" is based entirely around brittle vintage-synth sounds and minimal rhythmic loops, creating a tense atmosphere akin to Tangerine Dreams soundtrack work in the 80s. Theres still some of the funky fuzz that was so prevalent on Vol. 1, but the live drums of "Python Print" are overstimulated and on the edge of falling apart, interacting with equally nervous instrumentation for a sound thats overpowering and a little bit menacing. Even at their most direct, the tracks here are less about their grooves and more about their heavy atmospheres. Standout track "Vast Wildlife Poison" is sizzling fun, sounding like Boards of Canada remixing Serge Gainsbourg in a way where no idea was left behind. Both volumes of New Strategies have parallels to the lucid, cinematic feel of Squarepushers frantic fusion circa Music Is Rotted One Note or Budakhan Mindphone, but Prefuse 73 makes his imaginary soundtracks more dire and more frazzled, designing them to contain all the dark energy and dissonant conceptual clashes he can dream up. ~ Fred Thomas

Rovi