John Frusciante Vinyl, CD & Tape 6 Items

CURTAINS is the eighth solo album by JOHN FRUSCIANTE. It was first released on February 1, 2005, originall perceived as an lo-fi home recording record but the sonically elevated by contributions from AUTOLUX drummer CARLA AZAR, upright bassist KEN WILD, and THE MARS VOLTA guitarist OMAR RODRIGUEZ-LOPEZ. Frusciante's increasing comfort as a vocalist during this prolific spell is what is most notable here. One needs to look no further than the beauty of "Anne" for evidence. But Curtains is the sum of its parts. Nearly always inventive, the 11 tunes here collect to form one magnificent piece of art. The guitarist, singer, composer and producer Frusciante may be best known as guitarist of RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS (1988 until 1992, 1998 until 2009 and again since 2019). He recorded six plus studio albums with them and was inducted into the ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME. Frusciante has an active and succesfull solo career, having released many albums and EPs, his solo recordings include elements ranging from experimental rock and ambient music to new wave and electronica. Black vinyl 2023 repress for EU (2000 copies).

"The Will To Death" was first released on June 22, 2004. Frusciante had previously announced that in 2004 he would produce six albums during a six month break from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Will to Death being the first of these. Following the long and costly recording of his previous album, Shadows Collide With People, Frusciante decided to experiment with recording music quickly and in a minimalist fashion, doing a maximum of two takes per track. The songs are basically nice little pop tunes, with hard-panned oddball production and very personal, introspective lyrics. This album also marks a new personal aesthetic for Frusciante: he wanted these songs to be raw and immediate (as inspired by some of his favorite albums), and to this end there were very few takes involved with any of these songs, and mistakes and elements of chance found their way in as well. Frusciante's voice has come a long way, and there are some really interesting production touches as well. "The undeniable melodic licks of Frusciante are as vibrant as ever..." BILLBOARD // "John Frusciante restores my faith in singer-songwriters.... honest, sparkly, simply magical." - BBC

From the 2004/2005 six album series. It features Josh Klinghoffer and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez as guest musicians. The album genre is based around rock, with synthesizers playing only a minor role throughout. Inside of Emptiness is surely inspired by the raw production values of Lust for Life or White Light/White Heat. Considerably guitar-oriented it rocks hard up until the last track (a gentle rocker), without much polish As with the other albums in this series, Frusciante is wearing his influences on his sleeve but following his own vision, and it's quite interesting to track an artist's virtually unfiltered output over the course of a year or so. Inside of Emptiness won't win any awards for originality, but Frusciante deserves credit for maintaining a high level of quality with such a prodigious output.

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.

While I was almost exclusively listening to artists such as Chris Watson, Peter Rehberg, Bernard Parmegiani, CM Von Hausswolff, Jana Winderen, Oren Ambarchi, Hazard, Bruce Gilbert, Klara Lewis, Ryoji Ikeda, and so on, I was also inspired by my mental image of John Lennon's tape and mellotron experiments he made at home during his time in the Beatles, as well as events like the first minute of Bowie's Station To Station, ...And The Gods Made Love by Jimi Hendrix, the synths in the song Mass Production by Iggy Pop, and the general idea of Eno's initial concept of Ambient music.

Music being a solitary sculpture in sonic space was the main motivating thought. I was looking at pictures of sculptures and trying to make music that simultaneously conveyed both movement and stillness. I refrained from sudden musical changes, especially avoiding sequences of notes and rhythms. In fact, this music was made from sequences which never exceed a single note, many of these pieces being made on a single pattern. The movement which a good sculptor conveys when the shape of his medium meets the eyes of the viewer who walks around the piece, or the sun changes its position, are the kinds of movement which it was the role of the synth patches to communicate.

I've been listening to music like this since I was 13 or so, but I felt that making it was out of my reach because of the amount of restraint I imagined it required. Once I found myself making this music, it did not feel like a matter of restraint at all. I wanted to build a certain type of building, and hear certain types of movement, and I knew when it was complete. There was no place for sequences of notes and rhythms in my plans.

I also 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.

This music seeks to just exist, and is not attempting to manipulate or grab the listener in any way. I believe it works well if one listens loud and focuses on it, but also works well at soft volumes and in the background. It can compete with silence on silence's own terms, and it can also happily wipe silence out.

There are two versions of this album. The CD version is pronounced "two" and called : I I . This is the longer version. The vinyl version is pronounced "one", and called . I : This version is shorter, but contains one vinyl-only track. The reason the vinyl is shorter is that some of the tracks have sounds that can not be pressed on vinyl.

2023 Vinyl Reissue Of "Enclosure". On April 8, 2014 Record Collection released ENCLOSURE, the 11th full-length album from John Frusciante. Following a series of releases that all explore similar electronic themes and diversions as e.g. PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone album and surrounding EPs Letur-Lefr and Outsides, saw Frusciante diving headfirst into disorienting, barely cogent electronic music and filling in any remaining space with outspaced stuff from Funkadelic-like guitar solos to cameo appearances by members of Wu-Tang Clan. Not easily understood as dance music, experimental music, or rock music, Enclosure considers, rejects, and reconsiders all of them on a second-to-second basis and stands as one of the more listenable of Frusciante's ever-obtuse solo albums. Enclosure was written, produced, performed and engineered by Frusciante in his Los Angeles-based recording studio.