Hip-hop artist SCOTT HERREN, a.k.a. Prefuse 73, breaks new ground with his newest album Extinguished, which was the basis for his performance at the Paradise last week.

In a lineup of artists who are taking hip-hop in new directions, Scott Herren would look somewhat out of place.

An unassuming man who steers clear of illegal drugs and ostentatious jewelry, Herren seems more at home in a basement flipping through vinyl than in the back room of an exclusive nightclub with his entourage.

Although he was raised mainly in Atlanta, where his hip-hop roots go deep, Herren currently lives in his father’s hometown of Barcelona, far from the style and culture wars of the United States.

He has recorded using multiple pseudonyms, including electronic act Delarosa and Asora and the more organic Savath + Savalas. Herren is best known, however, for his groundbreaking work as Prefuse 73.

Prefuse takes his name from an era of music his alter-ego “holds dear”—the pre-fusion jazz of 1968 to 1973. Also influential for Herren are “80s edit records” and hip-hop, primarily from the years between 1988 and 1995.

Describing the Prefuse sound is an invitation to catastrophe; most focus primarily on the novelty in how he cuts up instruments and vocals.

The most unique aspect of his music, however, is the way he injects emotion into his tracks, working from source material that would come across as lifeless in the hands of lesser artists.

On tracks such as the brief yet haunting “Vikings Invade the Mediterannean But Don’t Leave,” Herren manages to coax heartbreaking beauty out of sterile piano samples, precise drums and various cut-up noises.

This is only one of the standout tracks from the recently released Extinguished: Outtakes EP, a testament to the creative powers of its architect. While working on a single for the song “Suite For The Way Things Change...” from his previous album One Word Extinguisher, Herren realized he liked many of his aborted Extinguisher efforts as much as the final album cuts. 

The resulting record is a dizzying tour through rapidly changing soundscapes, from the epic swells of “Dubs That Don’t Match” to the joyous propulsion of “For Some But Not Me.” It took a visionary like Herren to make the leap from remixing individual songs to remixing his album as a whole, using Extinguished’s textures and sounds to craft a set of completely different songs.

Although the next album will not surface any time soon, Herren drops subtle hints about its content.

He says that, although he loves to “work with emcees when they come” to him, he will try to incorporate “different sorts of vocalists” on the new record. 

Meanwhile, he says his upcoming Savath + Savalas album (due January) will “connect to places I haven’t exposed before.” Although the styles may differ considerably, Herren says that all of his music is inherently similar, all “inspired by the people and cultures around me and the way they interact with each other.”

Not content with limiting his innovations to his recorded work, at the Paradise in Boston last Tuesday Herren took his live show to a new level. 

The current tour is his first with a live drummer—John Herndon (of Chicago post-rock group Tortoise), who made a huge impact.