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

Morris Tepper opened - only know he was in the Magic Band -- he did a sort of Tom Waits-y set with some real cool guitar playing. What do people know about him?

But, anyways, the Frusciante show was cool -- songs composed specifically for the show. apparently he is doing a few more of these there -- they are listed just under "Performance #4, #5," and so on. He's playing again tonight.

i guess i wish i had an ipod right about now as i do not have the cd handy.

I love his lo-fi guitar sound so much; I can listen to his noodling for hours.
See also, this thread:
Ataxia - "Automatic Writing" (Frusciante/Joe Lally-Fugazi collaborate on excellent psyche-out mini-epic)

both awesome.

i need to hear this DC EP.

I have almost given up on playing pretty things and resigned myself to sub David-Byrne-esque twerky strumming.

iTunes synergy activate!:

Pussyfootin'the Duke...Comets on Fire
Your Pussy's Glued to a Building On Fire....John Frusciante
Instant Pussy....Matching Mole
Pussy Don't Fail Me Now...Missy Elliot

Sphere In the Heart of Silence, the Frusciante/Josh Klinghoffer colab album, is far different. Way awesome. It's kinda reminiscent of Kid A in it's structure and pacing, but it uses some ancient electronics and is way scratchier sounding. Josh Klinghoffer's singing voice is surprisingly good, too. He sounds kinda like a softer, more effeminate Thom Yorke, which makes a nice foil to John's more weathered voice. The song "Walls" on this album has one of the best vocal performances John Frusciante has or probably will ever lay to a track.

Sphere... (with Josh Klinghoffer) > Curtains > Inside of Emptiness > Automatic Writing (Ataxia) > Will to Death > DC EP

I've been re-dicsovering To Record Only Water for Ten Days these last two weeks what an awesome awesome album...

Yup. Need to dig it out again...

With No One is awesome

classic

Haha yeah "With No One" is the one I get stuck in my head all the time

classique

saw this dude play last week, it sounded like the royal trux

Weird; just last week I put all of the 6 Record Collection albums in one playlist and listened to them all for the first time in several years. There are some incredible (and incredibly sad) songs on there. I still have never heard the 2nd Ataxia disc (and I LOVED the first one)... I never see it in shops and it's not on iTunes for some reason (though the other one is). Anyone heard it?

http://johnfrusciante.com/

He'll never end up on the John Petrucci thread if he only talks through his lessons.

ENJOY!!

AWESOME

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

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…

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