flow when you feel like you're listening to a standard hip hop track but there's something in it that's not right." The cut-up vocals were also described by Herren as a tribute to Miami bass music and the group Mantronix. Herren said: "Old school dirty south and booty shake shit, just the way stuff was edited back then, all the bass music and edit records... that's what inspired me. I wanted to make edit records, but bring all the shit that happened afterwards into it, hip hop from the early 90s through the present day." The song "Nuno" features chopped-up vocals with only the phrase "fuck words of wisdom" intelligible; the title is a reference to the Portuguese musician Nuno Canavarro, whose 1988 album Plux Quba also features manipulated vocals including randomly-reassembled tapes of children singing. Herren used a sample from Canavarro's song "Wask" for "Nuno". The Sydney Morning Herald stated that "journalists obsessed with labels" had described the music in a range of genres "from 'glitch' to 'click-hop'." Music journalists made other comparisons of the music in context of both electronic and hip hop, with Exclaim! describing this sound as "not exactly what the hip hop world is used to hearing." Fact expanded on the description of the two genres, stating that "the sonic cut-ups that characterize Vocal Studies have often been linked to the IDM scene, but they can just as well be understood within the context of scratching and turntablism, where snatching small elements of records and re-contextualizing them was key." Herren has only described his style as hip hop, saying that he does not listen to electronic music and that "some people have a hard time accepting what I do." During promotion of his next album One Word Extinguisher, Herren stated that Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives did not have a particular theme as he was primarily focusing on and developing an editing style. In contrast, his follow-up One Word Extinguisher was about his relationship with a woman and the vast spectrum of emotions felt during a break-up. Release and promotion Prior to the release of Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, Herren performed at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Camber Sands in April 2001. The festival was curated by the band Tortoise, with whom Herren toured as the opening act in May 2001. Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives was released on June 11, 2001 through