Apropa’t, the new album from Scott Herren’s Savath & Savalas project, was released in late January this year. This mail is a summary of all activity surrounding the Apropa’t album, including news of live dates during 2004.


With his second critically acclaimed Prefuse 73 album, One Word Extinguisher and swift follow-up EP ‘Extinguished’, Scott Herren has made serious inroads towards the hip hop big league, clearing record shelves, going round the US twice with his band (featuring Tortoise drummer Johnny Herndon and DJ Ryan Rasheed), headlining the Fuji Festival in Japan, and receiving tempting production offers from some very big names indeed. Now 27 and fast becoming one of our generation’s most accomplished artists (producer, songwriter, and label owner of Eastern Developments), Scott Herren brings up a new Savath & Savalas record, Apropa’t.
Back in 2000, Scott released a previous Savath album - Folk Songs for Trains, Trees and Honey, a beautiful and understated classic that deserves to be heard.


Apropa’t is an album with a story. For the past 18 months, Scott has been based in Barcelona, Spain, searching for untold family roots and looking to put down some of his own.
“My father is from there,” he explains. “I didn’t grow up around him or the culture from Spain. So I was there immersing myself in the things I wasn’t able to be around growing up… also connecting to an important part of myself that is necessary for me to move forward in life.”

 
 
 
 
Scott’s quest led him to unknown Catalan singer/songwriter Eva Puyuelo Muns, and their meeting resulted in an instant musical connection. They shared the same passion for South American music, especially early 1970s Brazilian psychedelia, the simple production techniques, the very sad melodies also found in Spanish folk music, Afro/Cuban/Puerto Rican/NYC fusions and… tortilla de patatas. From Milton Nascimento and Maricio Lo Borges passing through Paco Ibañez and Música Dispersa, the story of two people finding themselves and each other in music is Apropa't.


“With Prefuse, living in Spain hasn’t affected me at all. With that, it’s best for me to work in the environment I’m used to ‘making beats’ in, which is Atlanta. But as far as Savath & Savalas, the environment has affected my music greatly. The whole project has become an almost straight-up, Catalan/Castellano vocal-based folk steez”


Mid-2003, Scott took the mostly sketched songs to Tortoise’s SOMA Studio in Chicago and mixed the tracks with John McEntire, with additionally recorded drums parts from Johnny Herndon. On the album you can hear both Scott and Eva singing, with a cornucopia of sounds from classical guitar, harmonium, concertina, bajo sexto, guitarron, harps and accidents thrown in. Recorded at home, on the outskirts of Barcelona, Apropa't captures a mood of dreamy intimacy, candlelit reverie and emotional intensity.
 
 
 

Absorb

The Milk Factory

BBC

Music News

CD Times

Music OMH

Super 45’s ( Spanish site)
 
“ A fine-boned, sure-footed delight from start to finish, recalling Bebel Gilberto, Stereolab, The Beach Boys and Francoise Hardy, but tapping Catalunya's full-blooded folk tradition"
Time Out London

"Hazy Latin songs emerge out of discreet electronic flutter, acoustic guitars trace shapes around Muns' and Herren's androgynous harmonies, odd bits of Tortoise go about their business in the background. And the whole thing emerges as an enchanting update of the dreamier end of 70s Brazilian pop - as good a record, in fact, as anything this gifted polymath has ever released."
4/5 John Mulvey, Uncut

“Herren brings as much of himself to Catalan culture as it brings to him. There is no fake authenticity in this musical exploration, and Herrens musical palette is impressively wide ranging... Impossible to pigeonhole, on first listen Apropa’t is almost casual in its effortless brilliance. Yet there’s something really substantial at its core.”
Mike Barnes in The Wire