One Word Extinguisher

One Word Extinguisher shows a range of emotional grappling usually foreign to instrumental hip-hop.

This record is a wonderful accomplishment – instead of relying on tricks and methods explored on earlier records, Herren expands via reflection, tracing sounds back to their roots in hopes of finding a new path.

An endlessly fascinating maze of sound.... This decade's Endtroducing..., possibly. [Jun 2003, p.98]

A set of electronica that's nearly as challenging as Autechre's relentlessly academic beat manipulation but just as funky and instantly gratifying as a Fatboy Slim flag-waver.

Isn't so much a leftfield perversion of HipHop as it is a restoration of the genre to its avant garde roots. [#231, p.67]

Herren takes what amounts to a series of completely artificial electronic noises and whips them into one of the most soulful, funky, relentlessly compelling albums since the Neptunes' last outing.

Perhaps the greatest expansion in Herren's sound is the range of emotion conveyed in One Word Extinguisher.

It's a busy, dazzling record, though more detours--like "Storm Returns," a dreamy guitar-and-beats collage--would help aerate things. [Aug 2003, p.118]

At 23 tracks (including two strong bonus cuts at the end), One Word Extinguisher simply tries to say too much, dragging noticeably during the final third, thus weakening the final impact.

Unlikely to be defined by any passing scene, Herren seems likely to go his merry way in the way production auteurs do, body-swerving ham-fisted attempts at pigeon-holing or categorisation.

This is meticulously constructed and flawlessly engineered music.

Sounds like a malfunctioning iPod loaded with The Neptunes, Aphex Twin circa Windowlicker and The Last Poets--only with all the fragments miraculously falling in just the right places. [Jun 2003, p.104]

Still more for headphones than headspins, but offering plenty for the heads. [#104, p.96]

One Word Extinguisher opens and closes with a batch of great songs, but gets a bit soggy in the middle, treading similar ground several times over again and tossing out tracks that feel too similar to what we've already heard from him.

Playfulness ultimately wins over arty schlock. [#59, p.106]

The rhythms have grown more techy and layered, wilding with drill-happy 16ths (on "Busy Signal," he and L.A.'s like-minded Daedalus cut up a human beatbox then go machine-gunning with piano notes), or throbbing and crackling out of an electronic ether (the radio-transmission lurch of "Detchibe") as though he's been studying glitchy Europeans.

The season's most deliriously funky beats. [Jun 2003, p.113]

Even if it doesn't always work, this is as imaginative an approach to hip hop production as the underground has ever generated. [June 2003, p.157]

One Word Extinguisher doesn't shock the way Vocal Studies... did but, if his debut drew the vivid hip-hop/electronic blueprint, Herren convincingly takes his plans and constructs something big with the follow-up.