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

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…

Does he claim to do that? I think he's just a mature musician that he wants to add exactly the right supportive part for their (largely boring, radio rock) songs, rather than squeezing in something jazzy, shreddy, dissonant, or trying to turn them into Radiohead.

I don't know what Flea's excuse his, except that maybe now they have so much experience as an arena band with a huge audience that they know what works on that scale, and save the weird shit for their private time or side projects.

by the way is 100 percent the record where frusciante’s ambitions guide them, especially across the last 4-5 songs, so it’s not like it’s never happened

i think the very simple answer is the soul of the band is them jamming together, and when they jam together it tends to produce this sound and these kinds of songs. frusciante usually has a few moments per record where he gets to fuck with the formula though, cf. “animal bar” on stadium arcadium, the rubin interview reveals he brought “these are the ways” whole into the ultimate love sessions, and you can certainly tell, etc. etc.

I like that tune "Montreal" off one of the Ataxia collections. It sounds like what PIL with Bob Dylan as lead singer might sound like.

once again i am absolutely obsessed with the will to death

Dunno, as much as I tried, nothing of his ever grabbed me like To Record Water… I guess that one will remain an outlier.

it only took eight years but wow i adore enclosure now

the skittery, constantly morphing drum programming is just the right counterpoint for the static yet gorgeous melodies he's singing over it. also even though his focus soon drifted toward making actual idm, i think he was really onto something when he was incorporating his guitar playing in his dance music experiments, especially on this record and "same" from the outsides EP

this'll be a really messy ranking but here we go

to record only water for ten days
enclosure
niandra lades and usually just a tshirt
the empyrean
the will to death
renoise tracks 2009-2011
dc ep
maya
shadows collide with people
pbx funicular intaglio zone / letur-lefr
trickfinger: look down, see us
trickfinger: she smiles because she presses the button
a sphere in the heart of silence
outsides
inside of emptiness
trickfinger ii
foregrow
4-track guitar music
trickfinger

Have to co-sign veronica's sentiment here Brad. Thanks for spending the time with this stuff and sharing thoughts. I know I'm very cynical about this dude's music these days, but there was a time I considered him one of my GOATs. So it's refreshing to be reminded of how I came to revere him so much in the first place. Thanks.

(earlnash also otm RE: Ataxia — that stuff can get pretty wild!)

as usual i forgot to rank ataxia!!! put both records above maya

That 'Montreal' track has this thing where you got the vocal which has this folky drone and then you got the droning guitar (kinda Keith Levene say in style) and then this repeating bass and drum groove. It's moving but it's got that statis that to me really captures the ever present waiting to get somewhere. I get a visual of a head leaned against a car/bus window while the miles roll on in a totally dead and gray landscape of rain.

"Sold all my records. What a stupid thing to do."

To me, it just captures the emptiness of the quiet times when you have to fight the loop of rumination of your mind turning over failures.

I'm not a huge fan, but I thought this song was pretty killer.

again, maya is soooo good

^^listening to it now, and Maya is sick. Much more immediately convincing than his other electronic records I've heard. Still has that Aphex/breakcore/IDM tinge, but it's ravier too.

https://acidtestrecords.bandcamp.com/album/i-i

his most recent release: improvised dark ambient drone. and really good for being his first foray into that realm