The Red Hot Chilli Peppers guitarist opens up about his forthcoming solo album, Maya.
In September, John Frusciante announced his next solo LP – a jungle and hardcore-inspired album, entitled Maya and dedicated to his cat. In the latest episode of RA’s Exchange podcast, the musician detailed the forthcoming release.
“The inspiration is definitely ’91-’96 jungle but I’m not trying to recreate that music,” he said. “In my case, it just happens to be what I was listening to everyday… it’s breakbeat bass music on Maya.”
“It’s meant to just be my version of the modern take on jungle. The drums go into a lot more abstract territory, it’s probably chopped up maybe more extremely than they were technically able to back then with the samplers they used, where you had limited sample time.” He added, “A lot of my friends consider it to be jungle but other friends consider it to be IDM.”
Frusciante also cited Aphex Twin and Autechre as influences. “With the Richard D James album, where he was at in his progression at the time with …I Care Because You Do, I really like [the tracks] for having that cold machine-like quality to them. They’re beautiful and at the same time there’s a characteristic to them that I would describe as non-expressive and machine-like that I found very inspiring.”
On his creative process, the artist explained, “I tried to limit myself to a few machines per track. Like Suburban Base, a lot of those people had a sampler, a mixer or whatever or maybe one synth. It was a lot for someone back then to have one effects unit, one for reverb or echo. And I find I like the sound of that – when people are struggling to make the most out of a few machines.”
“For this Maya record, I’m going to try to do everything I can on one synth,” he said. Frusciante described the upcoming album as an exercise “to really see what a machine’s power is, what its capabilities are.”
Maya is slated for release on 23 October via Timesig, a label founded by Venetian Snares. Head here to listen to the full podcast episode.
