frusciantequotes-blog

[frusciantequotes-blog]

John Frusciante | Enclosure.

[frusciantequotes-blog]

 You are free. Close your eyes. Open your mind. Let this music in, and you will see that this is true. —  John Frusciante

[frusciantequotes-blog]

John Frusciante’s speech at Johnny Ramone’s funeral

[frusciantequotes-blog]

I believe in what I do and I don't give a fuck about what anybody thinks of it

John Frusciante

[frusciantequotes-blog]

Heavyweights Radio 1/29/14 x John Frusciante x Black Knights - on Livestream.com

[frusciantequotes-blog]

Black Knights performing live while John Frusciante is the crowd.

[frusciantequotes-blog]

John Frusciante will be touring with The Black Knights

A fan asked about it on twitter and the guy from Black Knights said that he will be with them in every venue.

[frusciantequotes-blog]

CRYING

[frusciantequotes-blog]

Letur-Lefr for me signifies the transition of two becoming one, notably symbolized by the first song on the album being the sequel to the album’s last.

(via johnfrusciantemylife)

[frusciantequotes-blog]

"Music is energy, and energy is the single most important form of it in the world. Without energy, there is no life. The only difference between a dead person and a live person is the energy, the electricity flowing inside their system, and that’s what makes music." John Frusciante

[frusciantequotes-blog]

The hazy horizon of Los Angeles. Since it proves perpetually unpredictable, it is not odd when one finds their co-conspirators in disparate locales, often smoothing out the vague and jagged status quos that are only a figment of our own minds anyway. Enter KIMONO KULT, who’s initiates include current and ex- members of Mars Volta, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bosnian Rainbows, Swahili Blonde, Le Butcherettes, Dante Vs. Zombies, and Raw Geronimo – all who are adamant that this is not some “all-star” vanity project. In fact, one cannot even SEE Kimono Kult – one can only HEAR Kimono Kult (in theory with the true definition of OCCULT as “something hidden”).

A new project recorded, produced and shot-called by Neurotic Yell CEO and Swahili Blonde mastermind Nicole Turley, Kimono Kult synthesizes all the signature styles and influences from a cream of crop wrecking crew she has at her immediate grasp. Vocally fronted by the untamable Teri Gender Bender (Le Butcherettes, Bosnian Rainbows) their debut EP “Hiding In The Light”are four songs of electro/dub/afro-beat/ avant-freak/jazz-like conversations of instrumental ecstasy.

Opening the record, you hear Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (Mars Volta, Bosnian Rainbows) backwards string-arrangement on “Todo Menos el Dolor” (“Everything, Anything But The Pain”), initially reminiscent of Scott Walker’s “It’s Raining Today” before the drum machines anchor it into more modern territory. Teri’s shrill vocals plead with hybrid emotion as they tip-toe through the minimalist abstraction, while hallucinatory synths help narrate the tapestry. “Las Esposas” (The Wives) begins with a mysterious spoken-word intro, referencing a taunting, dusty 16mm film that may hold such Jodorowskian phantasmagoria, beckoning the character like an estranged lover as Omar’s slithering guitar line interlaces science-fiction beeps/bloops over Nicole’s pounding electro-rhythm. “La Vida Es Una Caja Hermosa” (Life Is A Beautiful Box) sees some fractured, sour synths filling voids between a post-punk dub foundation, while guitar interplay between Dante White (Dante Vs. Zombies, Starlite Desperation) and John Frusciante help build a mountain of subtle sonic thunder before it all dissolves gingerly into unanticipated silence. The EP ends with it’s catchiest accessible track “La Cancion de Alexandra” (Song Of Alexandra), an anthemic procession of self-realization where devotion and sacrifice hold hands. Some playfully sophisticated strings from Laena Geronimo (Raw Geronimo) push and pull with dueling trumpet lines to the forefront of this defiant, re-imagined march, Teri Gender Bender taking the role of the writhing Pied Piper as the credits begin to roll of this brief but incredibly resonant recording. – Gabriel Hart

Hiding In The Light will be available digitally March 4th, 2014

Hiding In The Light is performed by… Omar Rodriguez-Lopez – guitar, synths, strings Teri Gender Bender – vocals, guitar John Frusciante – guitar Nicole Turley – bass, drum machine, trumpets, synths, backing vocals Dante White-Aliano – guitar, synths Laena Geronimo – violin, bass, trumpets

[frusciantequotes-blog]

Outsides EP Pre-order

July 14 2013

On August 27th, John Frusciante will release the Outsides EP via Record Collection (August 14th in Japan). The bonus track “Sol,” available in hi-quality source audio, comes as an instant download with each pre-order.  Click corresponding link below:

North & South America Europe & Rest of World Japan

For more information about Outsides, see below from John:

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

[frusciantequotes-blog]

Limited Edition Catalog Reissue

November 12 2012

On December 11th, 2012 Record Collection will re-issue John Frusciante albums The Will To Death, Inside of Emptiness, A Sphere in the Heart of Silence, Curtains, DC EP, The Empyrean and Ataxia I & II on 180 gram limited edition vinyl. Each LP will also come with a download card for your choice of MP3 or WAV file.

US   International Store  European Store

**Preorders of The Empyrean, Curtains, and bundle packages sold out as of Nov. 28th.  More available in the new year.**

[frusciantequotes-blog]

The Creative Act January 16 2013 The phrase The Will To Death refers to the underlying, predominantly unintentional, organization in works by artists who love and are devoted to the creative force, but hate what they see of the life force and its ways. It is a set of abstract principles which may be applied in the creative act. In artistic symbolism, one comes close to death, and not only does he not die, but he lives more fully for having had the experience. It may be conceived as a set of musical/mathematical formulae which the musician utilizes without knowing it. The creative force is produce of the life force, but our judgement of the life force is based on our perception of its effects, its surface, everything that happens in the external world we know. The closest we come to seeing the essence of the life force is in our perception of the creative force. In works of art, the creative force provides addition and multiplication.The creative force is assisted by human intelligence through our devotion to division and negation, and so, symbolically, from the standpoint of human intelligence, the act of creativity is a striving towards death. The reason creative action can be a fulfilling life enriching thing, is because our creative thinking is negation only on the thoughts surface, the thoughts essence being identical with the wishes of the essence of the life force. So in The Will To Death one strives towards death, but is indirectly supported by the life force, and so the artists will is always aiming at something it never reaches, for the creative force upholds the aspects of the life force which the human is blind to. And so due to feelings and inner visions, the mental divisions and subtractions an artist must be fluent in carry him down a path that is only subtractive in his relationship to his tools, while the creative force carries the additive substance of the life force which is ultimately perceived. Subtraction and negation are always a matter of degrees, beyond which is the positive unknown, the essence of the life force. The primary perceptive apparatus of the artist is appropriately blind to the positives behind negation, yet he senses them, and he is often inwardly shown them. But just like people and their attachment to image and appearance, he cannot grasp the positive unseen and unknown, so he clings to his negations, subconsciously knowing they are attached to the life force, but consciously only knowing the life force by the world and its ways, that being his only working image of it. Were it not for the seemingly inexplicable meaning inherent in his work, he would not strive down a path of negation and division. It is the subconscious knowledge that this is actually an upward path which fuels him to continue to strive towards a greater comprehension of the negatives which to most people appear to symbolize the feared unknown, pointless to dissect. In other words, the artist strives toward death, because to him it feels like life. And when he presents his work to others, it looks like life to them, while it is actually negation and death which are beneath the surface. And, of course, beyond the surface of that, as I’ve just explained, is the life force, once again. If an artist is applying The Will To Death, he has the following three positions in balance. He is in between, occupied with negation and separation. In front is the expression of life, visible and audible to him and to others, and behind is the creative force, visible and audible only to him. Behind which is the life force, which he can not see anymore than his spectators can see his mental negations, or the personification of the creative force which is perhaps known to him. Three conditions need to be in balance for the artist to apply The Will To Death: 1) Trust in and devotion to the part of the creative act he can not control. He must possess a conception of the difference between the creative force and himself, to a great degree in order to be controlled by it. This means a kind of letting go of the very parts of himself that share something in common with the creative force, namely, the desire to maintain a solid forward motion. This motion comes if one trusts the creative force. None of us can cause it any more than we can cause the forward motion of time. To take part in it is all that is in our power, and to do so is a great privilege. If ones love for art is great enough, their appreciation for their chance to participate in the creative act great enough, then to trust in the energy which guides them comes naturally, If the artist has an internal personification of this aspect of the force, then it is this that he loves and trusts, but he still must love and trust when there is no image, but only a feeling and a non-specific, non-defined, sensible, talking force of energy. And this trust in what amounts to his own feelings, must be greater than his trust in the things people generally trust, such as general consensus, popularly accepted points of view, commonly adhered to limitations or restrictions, and present day conventions. 2) The ability to mentally lose himself in a fascination with negations and divisions. Essential to the creative process are contradictions, taking things apart, carving away at things, and disconnecting this from that. Most important is contradiction of the force that guides him, his love for this force being so great that the contradiction can not help but lead to a new agreement. He must be going in one direction, and then switch to a new direction, without losing his way. If condition 1 is in place he need not fear going astray. The artists role is to always look for new ways to go, despite that he is not the one driving. 3) Third is his creation of the appearance of conditions 1 and 2 as being a singular motion, not a multitude of contrary directions. This implies that conditions 1 and 2 are so balanced that there is a perfection of form in every countermovement contained within. Every counteraction soon finds its coordinate. Every ending feels like a new beginning. Every repetition feels like a continued flow. Every negation appears as positivity and every loss appears as a gain. There can be no difference between feeling and appearance to the artist, they must be one in the same. It is this point that is stressed by the undercurrent of the life force. The life force is far away, pertaining to arts essence, and it is also near, pertaining to the perception of the sum of all the things that comprise a works appearance. These are the sides. The artist sees three parts, what the creative force brings and perpetuates, what the artist himself twists, turns and counteracts, and the sum the artist perceives. And it is there that the artists involvement in their work must end, if The Will To Death is to be applied. Otherwise the artist is compromising condition number one, and to whatever degree he does so, the balance required for the application of The Will To Death is thrown off. The artist stands in the middle of two sides. What is beyond these is of no concern to him. He will never directly perceive the life force, and doesn’t want to. And he can’t hear with other peoples ears, or see with their eyes, and he sacrifices the benefit of his own senses to whatever degree he attempts to do so. The creative force is driving the artist in a car. The artist who attempts to take over the wheel will find The Will To Death unavailable to him, as he has made himself unavailable to it. Humans being located at a single point in the moment is the reason we hear and see as we do, and it is this which makes art and its perception possible in the first place. Our limited scope of vision is a gift, allowing us to see left from right, up from down, positive from negative and so on. Because each of us possesses a singular perspective, we can trust what we see and feel. We can contradict ourselves and be right both times. So to summarize, one must allow themselves to be controlled by, yet counter, that which controls them, in such a way that the momentum and basic design provided by the controller remains, while the will and individuality of the artist persists. The creative force is half the essence of the life force and half a correlative of the artist and all his essential negativities. In The Will To Death, the creative act is a friendly argument between the creative force and the artist. This is the same as two close friends arguing about boxing. Just as both friends have a certain knowledge in common which provides the basis for the argument, the artists ability to navigate through negations and divisions aligns him with the creative force and its additions and multiplications, to the point that the argument is actually an affirmation of that which connects them. The life force is primarily concerned with the effects of communicative energy, and the creative force is primarily concerned with the increase of the quality of art, and they have a perpetual friendly argument along these lines, and the lives and work of entertainers and artists, and the various combinations of the two, are the subjects. On the surface, it would seem that the life force always wins the argument with the creative force, and the creative force always wins the argument with artists. But while the life force created the creative force, the creative force in turn created the human perception of the life force. And the creative force creates artists, but humans mere existence creates a space for the creative force to live within. This means the apparent loser is always also the winner, as life force, creative force, artist and audience are all essentially one thing, just as a boxing argument results in the affirmation that each friend is his own man while the sport itself connects their differences. This was all set in motion so the true wishes of the life force would be vivified, of necessity, by negative units of itself, which gradually results in the hidden intentions of the life force becoming visible. The creative forces purpose involves the life forces higher aspects emerging victorious over its lower aspects, and the artists purpose involves the creative forces higher aspects emerging victorious over its lower aspects. What we see of the life force and its ways may often appear detestable, but the creative force we love represents the hidden parts of the life force, which we have been given the power to cultivate. This has been put in our hands in order to bring a flower out of the dirt.

John Frusciante

[frusciantequotes-blog]

Wayne

April 7 2013

This song was recorded for my friend Wayne Forman, the coolest, kindest friend anybody could ever have. When I used to play in arenas I would often mentally aim my playing at him. Wayne loved long guitar solos, and he was my favorite person in the audience to play for. As everyone who knew him is well aware, he was also the best chef ever. When I saw him two days ago, he was laying in front of a CD player, so when I came home I decided I’d make something for him. I recorded this solo for him to hear, but I finished it a day too late, so now it is a tribute to his memory. It is what he would have wanted me to play for him, and it is my offering to his family and friends all over the world, as well as anybody else. Wayno lives in our hearts forever, the greatest guy anybody could ever know. I’m so lucky to have been graced by his friendship. All the love in the world to him.

- John

[frusciantequotes-blog]

❝..You just have to be there for it. And sometimes to get yourself in a position to be there for it, is something that takes years of selflessness, or years of just a love for music… For whatever reason music produces the feelings in you that it does and playing an instrument produces the feelings in you that it does and you just… follow the light.