Music: Piano Overlord - Torture EP

Artist: Piano Overlord
Title: Torture EP
Label: Money Studies
Released: 2005

Review: Piano Overlord is yet another side-project of Glitch-Hop-Downtempo-Spanish-Folk-Acoustic-Electro-Freakout-Jazz musician Guillermo Scott Heron, otherwise known under the moniker Prefuse 73.

This time around, P73 is concentrating on the downbeat, though not as concentrated as on some of the Savath & Savalas recordings. Started as a sort of karmic debt payment plan to the Money Studies label, the idea was for P73 to restrain himself by using only sounds from pianos both electric and acoustic to see what kind of sounds he could bend, break and stretch out of them. I'm not quite sure if this equation has held through to this second EP release, but whatever the equation, it is an enjoyable one.

Both of the tracks on the A-side are mellow enough to play at dinner and interesting and cool enough to drop into a set during a lull at a party. The highlight of the EP comes with track two, "the overlord meets adventure time in sleepy keys," which is a compilation and confrontation with Daedelus and Frosty. Each musician manages to keep the mood cool. The listener is engaged in a hip-hop chess game by candlelight instead of an all-out war.

Side B of the EP contains two collaborations/remixes. The first, featuring the underrated rapper/multi-instrumentalist Count Bass D, is a chilled and stirred, not shaken, martini of a track highlighted by clipped and cut samples. The sampling and production on this track is the closest this EP gets to the Prefuse 73 equation, but that distance is still far past the horizon.

The last track on the EP is by far the weakest. A remix by Money Studies' own producer Blu Jemz ends up sounding like a leftover BS2000 track with a forced toughness pushing it's way through the flow of the rap. Money Studies is a great label, and Blu Jemz has got style when it comes to cuttin' and producin', but this time out, he dropped it. But shit, if I had my own record label, I'd remix something on every release too... Gotta get the name out.. and don't read me wrong, Blu Jemz is a name to remember.

One throwaway track among the four isn't so bad. This isn't Prefuse's best work, but it's worth grabbing a copy. If you are a Prefuse 73 fan (and if you saw him on the Surrounded by Silence tour, I know you are), you already have this. If you don't have it, good luck finding it, because everywhere I look, this EP is sold out. Don't worry too much though, Piano Overlord is realeasing a full length collection of all of his EP tracks plus a few others in a month or two.

Rating: 3.25 / 5

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