John Frusciante is releasing an electronic solo album after needing to “clear my head”.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist took to Bandcamp to announce his upcoming project, which he has produced all by himself, and admitted he found it to be a “therapeutic way of re-balancing myself” after releasing two albums, ‘Unlimited Love’ and ‘Return of the Dream Canteen’, with the band this year.
There are two version of the album, ‘. I :’ for vinyl, and ‘: I I .’ for CD and digital.
John wrote: “After a year and a half writing and recording rock music, I needed to clear my head.
“I listened to and made music where things generally happen gradually rather than suddenly. I would set up patches on a Monomachine or Analog Four and listen to them, hearing one sound morph into others, making changes to a patch only after having listened for quite a while, gradually adding elements, and finally manipulating the sounds on the fly. All tracks were recorded live to CD burner, with no overdubs, and executed on one or two machines.”
The 52-year-old musician went on to explain that he was longing to make music “from the ground up” rather than just doing his guitar parts.
He added: “I cannot overstate the role that being in my band played.
“I had previously spent 12 years programming and engineering my own music, and then spent a year and a half making music where my role was basically to write songs and play guitar. When the band’s recording phase was completed, I needed to go back to my adopted language.
“I had done enough with chords, rhythms, notes, defined sections, sharp transitions, etc.. What I needed was to create music from the ground up with nothing but sound, and have that music reflect ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’. It was a therapeutic way of re-balancing myself, before and during my band’s mixing process.”
The project is due out early next year.
John’s last solo LP was 2020’s ‘Maya’.