John Frusciante

JOHN FRUSCIANTE
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Six album series on Record Collection
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www.johnfrusciante.com
The Will To Death - 6.22.2004
ATAXIA Automatic Writing - 8.10.2004
DC EP (produced by Ian MacKaye) - 9.13.2004
Inside Of Emptiness - 10.26.2004
A Sphere In The Heart Of Silence - 11.23.2004
Curtains - 1.25.2005
ATAXIA Automatic Writing II - 5.29.2007
"Each [album] takes a completely different tone - classic rock, acid jamminess, electronic, acoustic - and the only unifying theme is the scarily naked level of emotion and honesty." - JANE
"John Frusciante restores my faith in singer-songwriters.... honest, sparkly, simply magical." - BBC
The Will To Death 6.22.2004
"The Will to Death, just might be one of the best rock 'n' roll discs this year." - SF WEEKLY
Three of the songs on The Will To Death were recorded and mixed in two days in December 2003. The other nine songs were completed in three days in January 2004. All of the instruments were played by my friend Josh and myself. In terms of the recording, it was recorded as if it were 1971, on 16-track tape and mixed to 1/4 inch at 15 ips. We did things the way that my young engineer and myself heard that people used to do them. No computers were used at any point in the recordings or the mastering.
Josh and I knew the songs well and always did the basic tracks (guitar and drums) in one or two takes. The vocals were all done in the space of a few hours. We felt that recorded performances in the 50's and 60's had an exciting energy to them because in many cases one or two takes were the only chances the artist got. For me, recording quickly is when music comes alive. When one doesn't force a preconceived notion on the music, but lets the music go where it pleases. And when mistakes come along, you welcome them and let them mold your image of the song. This record was a celebration of flaws, and in the course of approaching things this way I was reminded of the Laurie Anderson story about the family who had a yearly ritual which at one point started getting invaded by tigers, who would make a mess of it. Then after a few years of this they decided to make the tigers a party of the ritual and then the tigers never came back. In the same way once I welcomed my flaws into my recordings, I ended up unable to find anything undesirable in the finished piece.
It was also very important to me for the recording to follow a flow of energy from beginning to end. This meant it was always about capturing the moment. No reconsideration or backtracking took place and the mixing immediately followed the recording. The music carried us along rather than is forcing the music to conform to some grid of perfection. We found that when music itself is given that freedom, it is happy to carry the ball and the music and the energies around it create their own kind of perfection.
I have also become very interested in using my modular synthesizer, not so much as it's own instrument, but as a way of changing the sound and atmosphere of other instruments, often in subtle ways. And where I was previously using it to get "synthesizer" sounds that are rooted in things like Kraftwerk, I am now more interested in using my synthesizer to generate distortion, static and screaming high frequencies, sounds which in the context of rock music are rooted more in The Velvet Underground. Eno has also been very influential and inspirational to me in taking this approach of making music in which the people, the instruments, the signal path, the chord, the speaker, the air and the tape recorder all play equal roles of importance. He instilled in me the idea that sound is a whole process, rather than just execution and result. This record was the beginning of my consciously taking this approach and I have done a lot more with these ideas since. Doing things this way has allowed us to grow, as will be apparent in the upcoming months, when the remainder of what we have done yup to this point is released. I believe that in doing things this way there is an infinite amount of room for change.
My favorite records at the time of The Will To Death were:
Talking Heads - Fear Of Music, Nico - The End, The Velvet Underground, John Cale - Fear, Cat Stevens - Mona Bone Jackon, Van Der Graaf Generator - Godbluff
- John Frusciante
ATAXIA Automatic Writing 8.10.2004
I became friends with the members of Fugazi in Spring of 1999. They were my favorite band in the world and I was going to see them play live as much as possible. I am lucky to have seen them as much as I have. They have had a hugely positive effect on me, both as a musician and as a person. Joe Lally moved to LA from DC in October of last year. Josh Klinghoffer and I had done two experimental electronic shows here in LA at the Knitting Factory, both of which Joe had attended. We scheduled two more shows, thinking we would play songs off the at that time unreleased The Will To Death and soon to be released Shadows Collide With People. We asked Joe if he would play bass for us, to which he said yes. But I started to realize, very much in the spirit of that period of time, that I was not interested in repeating things I had done, but wished to do things that were new.
The three of us agreed on a basic musical direction and we started rehearsing, playing long improvisations with repetitive bass lines and exploratory drums and guitar. We would record them and at night I would write vocals for my favorite pieces. At rehearsal I would sing, trying to adjust to playing in an exploratory way while simultaneously singing. Joe wrote vocals to one song and Josh wrote vocals to two.
We were feeling very much like the music was playing us. There is this feeling that often comes when playing music with people which is that music is just there and we, as musicians, are sucked into it's swirling energy. That is what it felt like, and we felt so good about the songs that had resulted from these improvisations that we decided to book studio time. We thought we would record it all in one day, but we ended up recording 90 minutes of music in four days. We recorded for two days, then played the two shows at the Knitting Factory, then recorded for another two days. Everything was recorded live in the studio with most of the lead vocals recorded with basic tracks. We spent an equal amount of time experimenting with electronics and doing treatments as we did recording the band. The sessions will be released in two halves. The first is called Automatic Writing and will be released on August 10th. The other half will probably come out in January or February.
These were very exciting records to make. Normally in the recording studio there is a sense of being careful in the performance, but on this record there was a sense of abandonment and being out of control. When one records on tape there is no fixing to be done. What occurs during the live tracking is all there is, but instead of being careful we just went off. It was a great feeling. Basically, the three week period this music was made in was a very exciting time and I feel like I will always hear that music with the same sense of wonderment I feel now, which is just with a question in my mind of, "how did this happen?" It happened so quickly and I would rate our best moments with some of the most powerful feelings I have ever felt in my life.
Listening to what we did I am, without fail, shocked by what a deep groove Joe lays down and how free, yet solid, Josh's playing is. There was a great feeling that ran through everything which was that at any second something could go wrong...yet it never did. Josh and I went on to do other records and other experimental shows, one of which featured Joe in a completely different context. I have had other musical relationships with great musicians where the music just floated into thin air without being properly recorded. I am glad that in this case I had the perseverance to document what took place between the three of us.
This record marks the first time I am extensively using the synthesizer in a way that has nothing to do with 80's synthesizer sounds. I am using it to treat the vocals, the drums etc. as well as to make noise that has more to do with feedback and computer noise music (like Pita) than with anything people normally associate with the synthesizer. As I said in my bio for The Will To Death, I am drawing inspiration for how to approach my modular synthesizer from music that has no synthesizer, such as The Velvet Underground and Max Neuhaus, as well as synthesizer music that has no relationship to the way synths are used in pop music, such as Iaanis Xenakis and David Tudor.
Hats off to early PIL as well...from all of us in Ataxia.
- John Frusciante
DC EP 9.14.2004
The DC EP was recorded in Washington, DC at Inner Ear studios. It is owned by Don Zientra and it is where Fugazi and most of the other Discord artists record. My friend Ian Mackaye had been encouraging me to come out and record, and I had been wanting to do these songs with Jerry Busher playing drums. I first met Jerry in the spring of 1999 at the same time I met Fugazi. He was their tech as well as playing the second drum set on some songs. He is one my favorite drummers. He is in currently in a group called French Toast (with James Canty of the Make Up) and he has another group called The All Scars.
The sessions were produced by Ian. It was interesting for me to leave a lot of the production type ideas to someone else. Even though we recorded and mixed four songs in two days, it was a very relaxed session and more like a vacation than work. Ian is one of the only living people who I really respect and look up to, so it was an honor and a pleasure as well as a great learning experience to hear his perspective. It was also interesting for me to do a recording without any of my equipment...the lesson being that it still sounds like me.
For the solos I borrowed Guy Picciotto's Les Paul Junior from the Rites of Spring days. This guitar was played through Ian's Marshall head that is pictured on the cover of Fugazi's Red Medicine. This EP is also unique in that it is the only album I have done in the last five years with no synthesizer whatsoever. Jerry, Ian and I all hope to make more music together.
- John Frusciante
Inside Of Emptiness 10.26.2004
Inside Of Emptiness was made in Los Angeles by Josh Klinghoffer, engineer Ryan Hewitt and myself. My favorite records at the time, in terms of the production, were White Light/White Heat by Velvet Underground and Lust For Life by Iggy Pop.
The first song is called "What I Saw" and it was written in New York. We distorted the fuck out everything on it. It is very dirty. The second song is called "The World's Edge" and it is a good example of why I think Josh Klinghoffer is the best drummer in the world. The third song is called "Inside A Break". It was written in Japan. This song contains a guitar solo by Josh that is being electronically bent out of tune.
The fourth song is called "A Firm Kick" and continues my series of A songs ("A Doubt", "A Corner"). It contains a noisy guitar solo that I did by beating the fuck out of my guitar. "Look On" was written in Paris, France and is a look back at the 70's and long guitar solos.
"Emptiness" was inspired by the little known group Empire. They were an offshoot of Gen X and they made brilliant original music that was completely ignored by the public (how unusual!).
"Emptiness", "I'm Around" and "666" were all written while I was reading a biography about Aleister Crowley. Each of these three songs, in their own way, are the result of me thinking about him and his life.
"I'm Around" contains our first example of what I call joined guitars. Toward the end and in the second chorus Josh and I played intertwining Johnny Marr type guitar parts through the same amp which causes the two separate parts to be perceived by the ear as one part.
The title "666", aside from being the name Aleister Crowley often signed letters as, is also a reference to the chorus' three bars of six which are interjected into the otherwise 4/4 feel of the song (something that was unintentional and subconscious).
"Interior Two" was written the same day as "Inside A Break". It is inspired by early rock n' roll. I love that music and those types of lyrics and it is fun for me as a songwriter to juxtapose music that would have sounded current in 1958 with lyrics that go in surreal or nonsensical directions that didn't exist in music back then.
The last song is called "Scratches" and we think the Rolling Stones should buy it off us.
We are greatly indebted to the Rick James episode of Chapelle's show, the watching and quoting of which helped give this record a happy atmosphere.
Thank you for listening.
A Sphere In The Heart Of Silence 11.23.2004
A Sphere In The Heart Of Silence is a record of electronic music made by Josh Klinghoffer and myself. After a few months making raw and/or stripped down music we decided to go back to making more layered, richly textured electronic music. It was still recorded as if it were 1970, but with modern electronic instruments that didn't exist back then.
The first song "Sphere" was originally made to be performed live at Performance One, the first in a series of ten individually conceptualized shows consisting largely of experimental music. It has been shortened to a cozy 10 minutes for the purpose of fitting into a record. The original version, as it was performed at Performance One, was thirty minutes long.
The second song "The Afterglow" dates from the time of the songs on Shadows Collide With People. Half of these songs were originally intended to be part of Shadows but we decided to let Shadows center around my more songwriter-type songs and save our more experimental collaborative stuff for this album. On "The Afterglow" Josh wrote and played all the music and I wrote a vocal over his original 8-track recording. It's fun singing over such tripped out layered music. Two basses and two guitars.
The basis of "Walls" was programmed in about 15 minutes the morning of Performance Five when we opened for Blonde Redhead in Pomona. I danced and did abstract vocal effects that night, but when we recorded it I wrote a proper vocal (literally written while the drum machine was going to tape). This song journeys from the past to the future and back.
"Communique" was originally performed at Performance Two at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood. This is one of those recordings so rare in today's world that took as long to record as it takes to listen to. Josh sang and played piano while I made noise on my modular synthesizer and there were no edits.
"At Your Enemies" and "Surrogate People" were both from the time of Shadows. They are both written by Josh with the exception of my vocals on "Surrogate People". We were discovering so much about making electronic music back then and albums like Amnesiac, Vespertine and Confield were all coming out at that time which were opening our minds to the infinite possibilities of that realm.
The last song is called "My Life". It was originally performed at Performance Four. Like "Communique", "My Life" was recorded in real time. The footsteps at the end are me going back to the control room.
My friendship with Josh is something I'm very blessed to have. To have experienced so much closeness through hearing music together as well as playing music together is one of the main things that has given meaning to my life.
Thank you for listening.
- John Frusciante
Curtains 1.25.2005
"He's got to be stopped" - John Lurie
Curtains is thankfully the last record in the six record series that John Frusciante recorded in 2004. It was recorded on an Ampex 8-track tape machine from 1970 and was recorded at his house. He sat on his living room floor and played and sang his songs and then did overdubs. The overdubs were assisted by Carla Azar of Autolux on drums, Ken Wylde on upright bass and Omar Rodriguez of The Mars Volta, who played lead guitar on two songs.
It is a very warm album. It is also very sad, with additional doses of happiness, strength and humor for good measure. I do not exist, but if I did I would put this record on my living room turntable at night and dim the lights, keeping a blanket nearby and nestle into the cozy air molecules this music creates.
- Anonymous
ATAXIA - AUTOMATIC WRITING II 5.29.2007
The word ‘Ataxia’ is Greek for ‘disorder’.  We were unaware at the time that it also has a meaning in English which is: total or partial inability to coordinate voluntary bodily movements, as in walking. In keeping with our names’ Greek meaning (quite unintentionally), the sections of our songs never had an arranged order.  All our songs’ foundations are the bass which always plays one part throughout. The drums and guitar move about and generally use the vocal as their guide.  The vocals and words were written, but the order the vocal sections occurred in, and how long the spaces between were, was different every time. So we would all stay on our toes to stay together for dynamics, changes in groove, switches to new sections, etc.
  We played two shows and recorded two records.  The first record was released in August 2004.  It was named after the surrealist activity called Automatic Writing.  That was where people like Andre Breton and Max Ernst would write words in the form of sentences and paragraphs, but with absolutely no conscious attempt at meaning.  They would observe the structure of their subconscious and it’s peculiar methods of organization (or the lack thereof) this way.  And if there is one sure answer I can give to the question, “How did you write and record two albums in a week and a half?”, it is that we gave absolutely no thought to what we were doing, whatsoever.
  This music is unblemished by any expectations of a specific result, on our part.  The three of us simply got together to hear what music had to say that week.  We had fun together and this is the record of that fun.
  - John Frusciante