John Frusciante has released a brand new album, : I I ., his latest electronic music endeavor. The famous guitarist has long tinkered with electronic side projects (such as his former alias Trickfinger), and now he divulges a magnificent showcase of his work with ambient music.
“After a year and a half of recording rock music, I needed to clear my head,” Frusciante writes in release notes. The album, which is pronounced “two,” is like nothing we’ve heard from the musician ever before. His previous solo electronic stuff was based on danceable genres such as house, techno, electro, and jungle. This new body of work is a zen-like ambient odyssey.
Frusciante expands on the creative process for this experimental project further:
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.
If you’re in the mood for some warm, droney music that “was made from sequences which never exceed a single note,” you should definitely check this out.
You can listen to Frusciante’s : I I . below. Enjoy!