John Frusciante Preps Second Album In Series Of Six
Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante is currently on a six-month hiatus from the Peppers. Usually when musicians take a break from their busy touring, recording and promoting schedules, it’s to relax. Not in Frusciante’s case. As we’ve already reported, the Peppers guitarist has decided instead to record six albums and release one per month for the next six months.
The first album in the series, Will To Death, was released on June 22. On August 10 Frusciante will release the second album, Ataxia: Automatic Writing, which consists of five songs and runs for about 44 minutes.
Ataxia: Automatic Writing is a joint effort between Frusciante, Josh Klinghoffer of Bicycle Thief and Fugazi’s Joe Lally. Frusciante met Fugazi in 1999.
“[Fugazi] were my favourite band in the world and I was going to see them play live as much as possible,” Frusciante said in a statement. “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.”
Frusciante had performed a couple of shows in LA with Klinghoffer and the two musicians soon asked Lally to play with them. They called themselves Ataxia and began writing and recording together.
“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 its swirling energy,” said Frusciante. “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.”
Ataxia spent four days recording 90 minutes of music, recording everything live in the studio with most of the lead vocals recorded with basic tracks. Frusciante admits that he was not careful with this record, but instead there was “a sense of abandonment and being out of control.”
“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?'” he said. “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.”
—Stephanie Lagopoulos
