John Frusciante....... C/D?

New album is streaming on Luisterpaal

I bought it blind from iTunes. It starts off with a great 9 minute instrumental with some awesome guitar stuff, which segues into a pretty cover of "Song for the Siren." Then it sounds a lot like his other albums - vague lyrics (as in platitudes, not surreality); nice chord changes. I need to give it a few more listens, but I'm having a hard time summoning the desire so far. Does anyone else have it/like it?

new record is kinda batshit and very good

100 percent more amen break on this record vs. other frusciante solo records

without his edgy playing rhcp would lose their last bit of relevance. when he came back for californication - that saved the band.

When he left the 2nd time, it made the band irrelevant again.

what's the new one like - after my initial enthusiasm for this guy and the godly 'Water' I kinda drifted away as he seemed more interested in tortured blues rock.

new one is sort of like a proper follow-up to to record only water for ten days, but way more unhinged. free jazz drumming that morphs into drill n' bass, cheesy synth sounds, almost niandra-esque frusciante vocal stuff over the top

but in more than a few instances the songwriting is very traditionally pretty.

xp
wow - reading his blog/website, it seems I shouldnt be worried about him getting too trad-rockish:
http://johnfrusciante.com/2012/07/09/my-recent-history/

It's a great read esp the part about training his musical mind to regain control from his musical body - which goes against so many rockist clichés.

here's probably my favorite track from the record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM6nxPH8h5E

hmmm might take me a while to get into this...

not sure what i think about the musical results, but the blog post is great, for someone in his potential position to make that kind of move is really admirable.

oh god i've turned into hansel from zoolander.

oh man this EP is just awful.

Yeah I checked it out after reading the blog post linked above and man, what a letdown.

Sounds like he heard Roni Size and Wu Tang yesterday. Is the full length better? It was on my wishlist but now...mmm not so sure. Always have time for this guy but this EP is the pits. One of those rare times I wish I hadn't bought without listening first. Maybe the kids are onto something.

i like the full length but it's definitely in the mode of the ep

streamed the LP and listened to it distractedly hoping for a new 'Water...' but yeah the whole thing sounded very stuffy and messy

Listened to the Empyrean a bit this weekend. I could see myself getting lost in it for a while. The opening track is very much Maggot Brain-inspired, but makes me sadder than Maggot Brain.

His singing at times reminds me of Phil Collins.

Still listening, by the way. Never stopped. I've checked out and enjoyed several of his other solo records too (Niandra Lades, Ataxia, the first one with Klinghoffer, Curtains), but the Empyrean is something else completely astounding. I wish I'd been listening to for 20 years. Very intricate and proggy and psychedelic, but soulful and real too.

Been especially into this pair (not consecutive on the album)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71LSWZr0dHA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXbEmzW-fJo

listened to the empyrean on repeat on a lot last year and i decided it's his best

not sure I have any desire to check this out, but what a guy

Outsides consists of a 10 minute guitar solo and 2 abstract “out” pieces of music. Here I use the word out in the same sense as the term was used in free jazz. It’s a modern approach to the concepts of harmony found in some late 50s/early 60s free jazz and some 20th century classical. I don’t employ any aspects of rock or pop harmony, and that was basically the approach, just to make music that is not reliant on the center that, on PBX, was provided by my songwriting style. I consider this to be working along abstract lines. Making forward moving, full sounding music without resorting to any familiar musical relationships of harmony to serve as a basis has been a goal of mine for quite a while. Both songs have my style of drums and guitar solos, but nevertheless I think of them as my version of modern classical music. They started as just orchestra, but I go wherever music takes me, and I use any instrument to express my feelings, just as I use aspects of any style. For instance, on Shelf, despite the unconventional tonality of the section, I was surprised to find that a blues guitar solo worked well. Also, both songs have Acid sections.

The 1st song, on the other hand, is a new approach to the form of the extended solo. The effect is that of an improvisation between the drums and guitar, but these specific interactions between those instruments could not take place with a traditional drummer and lead guitarist. It’s basically my dream drummer, because he listens and responds to what I am playing, yet he also provides a solid anchor for me to respond to, without the usual delays involved in those contrary actions. He also gives me large spaces of silence and then comes back in exactly on one of my accents, as if he knew I was going to play a note in that precise place. This impossible interaction is due to the fact that the guitar solo was performed to a repetitive 2 bar version of the drum beat, and then afterwards I chopped up the drums so they are interacting with and responding to the solo for the entire 10 minutes. I used only one break for the entire song, trying to get the most I could out of it. Amazing how many new beats there are to be found in a one bar break. This work method allowed me to polyrhythmically go way out on a limb with the guitar, while drum-wise remaining as tight as a funk drummer who somehow mentally follows and compliments each polyrhythm perfectly. Funk drummers normally lead their band, while busy drummers supporting polyrhythmic soloists must listen to and be guided by the soloist, and yet in this song, the drummer is doing both of those things at every moment.

Also, the other instruments are changing by the section and normally extended solos do not have sections so to speak. I maintain a consciousness of the 16 bar cycles, whereas rock soloists and their bands generally abandon multiples of 8 bars, and lose sight of the big picture, hence the boredom long solos became known for. In other words, a guy’s normally soloing over maybe a two bar vamp, and everybody naturally continues to hear larger frames, but gradually these frames become different for each person hearing the music. This not only disconnects the audience from the band, but also disconnects the band members from each other. This is the opposite effect that rock music generally strives to achieve. Whereas, this solo moves forward and changes constantly, like a song does, and the guitar must change keys with the music in the same way a singer must. In extended solos, guitarists usually avoid this inconvenience by soloing over reliable musical backgrounds, called vamps, or by soloing over chord progressions in which the chords all draw from the same 7 notes. When presented with a progression like this, most guitarists would make up a melody, or compose a basic game plan for a solo. You just don’t hear people improvising a long, ballistic solo like this over this kind of classical/Tony Banks chord progression. This ability comes partially from the fact that when I practice along with a CD, I will play one part, say the keyboard, while thinking about at least one other part, say the bass, and my eye follows the frets where the bass part would be if I were playing it. If I fail to “see” the bass part for a few notes, I rewind and do it again until I am playing the keyboard part and seeing the bass part. I’ll do this with all the instruments until my brain understands all the inherent relationships of pitch and rhythm, and by doing this I have as good a mental idea as I could muster about “why” that piece of music makes me feel how it does. Short guitar solos over modulating changes are particularly illuminating using this practicing method. If a musician plays the chords while seeing the solo, and then plays the solo while seeing the chords, it becomes clear “why” the guitarist chose those particular notes at the times he did. This form of practice is based on the same basic musical principle which Jimi Hendrix’s rhythm guitar style showed us, which is that you could be thinking of the chords and a lead part at the same time. We guitar players previously understood this principle as “I can play chords and a lead at the same time”, but at this point in time, over 40 years later, we can now appreciate that it is the ability to think of chords and a lead at the same time which caused him to play in this style, and a new type of soloing can result from engaging in this same mental action, but only playing the lead part. Allan Holdsworth has always been great at this, but we are not talking about jazz here. Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself. To lose your mind while you are mentally considering two opposing perceptions of the music at hand, is a skill rock musicians as a whole have yet to develop.

The style I’m playing in is basically the way I play on PBX, but by this point I had gotten to playing that way with total reckless abandon. This was more of a mental development than a physical one. The difficulty in playing in this style is to think of two separate melodies, in two different ranges, at the same time, and execute them on alternate steps so that they both occur as a single melodic passage. This principle humbly began with some of the lead work Robert Fripp did in the 1970s, and was developed much further by people programming 303s and 202s in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

Throughout the last few minutes of the solo, the guitar is being treated by my modular synthesizer and its 64 step sequencer, receiving many triggers from a modded 606 drum machine, and again, it’s a real pleasure to add to an improvisation with musical actions which are right in line with the thinking of the soloist. In this case, it’s me going off on the sound of my guitar with the same abandon as I played the instrument with.

Rock music is electronic music, dependent entirely on electronic circuitry and amplification. This song gives new life to the long ago popularly discarded form of the extended rock guitar solo, and is also progressive synth pop, just the same. The Ep is 20 minutes long.

-John

So turns out this guy only had one great album in him (To Record Water)

nah shadows collide with people and the empyrean are as good

although i totally understand that position bc water is a very singular record

for the longest time I tried to pretend that I liked Shadows but recently I've realized that it just doesn't do anything for me. Not familiar with Empyrean, I might need to check it out

well it's kind of his ultra prog record. ymmv

http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/01/john-frusciante-teams-up-with-omar-rodriguez-lopez-for-new-band-kimono-kult/

oh, and a new solo ish

http://johnfrusciante.com/article/enclosure

omg thank god i thought he died

is there suppose to be a comma after the "thank god"?

i guess…I'm glad hes not dead, and that he's got a new record out

lol

this is such a cool album (shadows)

back in RHCP for some ungodly reason

every one of his solo releases has something to recommend it, from what I've heard.

(that EP Outsides that he wrote about up above is really great, for instance)

maya, his straight up breakbeat idm record from 2020, is surprisingly very good

Leave us not forget (my gateway)https://orlprojects.bandcamp.com/album/omar-rodr-guez-l-pez-john-frusciante"> https://orlprojects.bandcamp.com/album/omar-rodr-guez-l-pez-john-frusciante

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qBDrdZVCpQ

this album was likely ignored bc it was billed as a bunch of experiments in electronic music that preceded and/or weren't considered good enough for the two very manic albums of exploded music frusciante put out in 2012. but uhhh it's fucking incredible?

I was skeptical for the first forty seconds, and then I was sold. Makes me nostalgic for a lot of early/mid '00s idm and breakcore that I used to listen to at the time.

the one time i met JF was at a Squarepusher show!

Renoise rules (new version out that works on Raspberry Pi!)

He was surprisingly inactive in the 2010s compared to the 2000s.. what did he do all this time?

sleep on a pile of money

idk i feel like he released a ton of material in the 2010s, there were just no “five records in a year” kinds of stunts

the first trickfinger record is a pretty ok acid/idm record, the follow-up EPs are all pretty awesome and unique though

i had no reason to expect he'd be any good at dance music and feel like maybe i'm grading him on a curve (or, as with justin broadrick, i have such an all-encompassing obsession with his music that i'll even listen to the damaged electro shit no one cares about)... but idk i love it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPjy2qeabyc

Even though I've never spent any real time with his records, I just love that he has equal time & respect for breakbeats & synth-based music as guitar. In that Rick Rubin interview he mentioned spending the last year before rejoining RHCP both doing a deep dive studying and transcribing Charlie Christian's playing and making electronic music.

Obviously it's nice to have the money to just mess around with music all day, but he's clearly a true obsessive and it's rare to find an instrumental prodigy who takes electronic music that seriously.

very otm

Brad, I have mucho mucho respect for you based on the years you have provided insight and enthusiasm for stuff such as RHCP that would be challenging for the average late 40s/early 50s person such as myself, who loved the band 30 years ago but find them in the past 20 to be thematically the Eagles (LA will fuck you up, LA is alluring) in the format of Aerosmith (white bros inspired by black music), i.e. conservative radio rock. And yet here is this guy who this band needs, who when he is in the band provides them with these song structures and melodic elements that are no doubt the key to the success of that radio rock, but on his own nickel does very pure, adventurous music. Why do you think that none of his adventurous inclinations rub off on the band? Do Flea and Anthony not want that? (they posture as if they do)? Or do you think he says "RHCP is where I do easy to digest music, which I like and is part of me." For all the guy talks about Squarepusher or Sparks or Steve Howe or Schoenberg or Stockhausen or free jazz, I wonder why he can't put a bit of that in this band…he claims to do just that, but all comes out as conservative twaddle…not like I want the band to sound like Twin Infinitives, but they— not just him, but all three of them— could do better…

Yesterday the band was on Stern, and I do find them all to be pretty likable people… none of them think that they are toxic bro jocks…