If you think the name of erstwhile guitar god John Frusciante’s forthcoming EP is weird, check this out: It precedes a full-length project called PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone.
So, we’ll stick with the music … because it’s plenty weird too — a millennial amalgam of aerated, early 1980s-inspired electronics, soaring R&B vocals and gritty hip hop realism. You were expecting, like, guitar? Not so much on the former Red Hot Chili Peppers axeman’s Letur-Lefr, a progressive synth-pop surprise which arrives July 17, 2012, through Record Collection Music in advance of the subsequent album on September 25.
Instead, Frusciante delves deeper into sounds he’s claimed as influences for years like Depeche Mode, New Order and the Human League, but with new wrinkles courtesy of soulful wailer Nicole Turley (aka Frusciante’s wife) and RZA — the Grammy-winning producer/MC from Wu-Tang Clan.
Letur-Lefr opens with “In Your Eyes,” a track that quivers with a weird emotional fragility behind a series of thudding electronic beats. “909 Day,” with its icy synth and mechanized rhythms, then advances early experiments in new wave that go back at least to solo efforts like 2001’s To Record Only Water for Ten Days. It’s only with “Glowe” that we hear Frusciante (if only for a moment) mix in some guitar sounds, but — just like that — they vanish.
The complex and surprising “FM” dives deeper into rim-rattling bass, then a street-wise rap, then a billowing psychedelia. Finally, there’s “In My Light,” which inverts the devastating vulnerability of Letur-Lefr’s opening track: A frenetically cascading keyboard signature girds a hard-won vocal that, this time, gives away nothing. In that way, Letur-Lefr ends up raising more questions than even your average EP, which — owing to its inherent time constraints — often raises a shitload of them.
Turns out, these songs were actually recorded in 2010, just after Frusciante’s last solo release (2009’s The Empyrean) and at roughly the same time the guitarist announced his second departure from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He then immediately began work on a series of songs in 2011 that will eventually become PBX, with a leftover track called “Wall of Doors” to arrive in between the two releases.
Who’s to say what they will bring? Frusciante has always been a bit of an enigma, from his wunderkind emergence as the Red Hot Chili Peppers went supernova with 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magic to his abrupt split a year later and descent in addiction — a period that included the stream-of-consciousness 1994 four-track project Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt and then the relentlessly desolate Smile from the Streets You Hold from 1997, an album Frusciante now readily admits was released for drug money. Yet, despite cleaning up and making a celebrated return to the Chili Peppers for their best-selling effort Californication in 1999, Frusciante clearly didn’t become any less interesting. Letur-Lefr simply presents more onion-like riddles to peel back.
As for the EP’s title? Frusciante has explained, sort of: “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.” The naming of PBX, meanwhile, involves internal communication systems, trams connected by a cable, and a sculpture technique.
OK. Like we said, stick with the music. There’s plenty there to intrigue, delight, even confuse. That’s the Frusciante way.
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