the studio, Herren met Joshua Kay and Romulo del Castillo, two Miami-based producers who had founded Schematic Records, a label known for IDM. Herren recorded and composed music on his MPC and manipulated it to fit Schematic's aesthetic. While working at the recording studio, Herren felt that the hip hop musicians coming in had very trite lyrics, and felt he could use them for his own Prefuse 73 material. For Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, Herren sampled more famous hip hop records by artists including Nas, Ol' Dirty Bastard and Erykah Badu. Herren stated that he used some of his favorite MCs instead of the musicians he worked with, as he felt these artists were "saying totally relevant stuff, but I guess it was just my excitement to make it happen. But a vocal doesn't have to say anything. Why not challenge people's imagination and let it say whatever they want it to?" For Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, Herren created the music using two turntables plugged into his MPC. To create the glitch sounds through the MPC, Herren switched between different sample sources by instantaneously silencing groups of audio channels at the same time. In 1999, Herren signed to the British label Warp under two aliases, Prefuse 73 and Savath & Savalas, after Warp staff had heard a previous record of Herren's which had sparked their interest in his work. Herren was familiar with the label through artists Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada, but chose to sign to Warp as he was a fan of the group Broadcast who had released an EP through the label. Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives features rapping from Mikah 9, Aesop Rock and MF Doom, and vocals from Sam Prekop of the indie rock band the Sea and Cake. The vocalists did not work directly with Herren, but sent him audio tapes of their own vocal recordings. Herren later commented on having Prekop sing on the album, noting that having an indie rock artist on the album was his way of trying to get his sound out to a new audience. Music Herren described the album as an attempt to bridge hip hop instrumentals with vocal-orientated hip hop tracks, saying that the chopped and edited raps were "another layer of music" and that he was "into creating a whole new mangled language [...] it's a form of communication without communicating, a new