Drawing the Curtains: Frusciante's life through the albums Part Three

Next follows A Sphere in the Heart of Silence, which was released in November of the same year and is one of Frusciante's albums which closely resembles his first recordings over a decade ago. The album is a joint effort with multi-faceted musician Josh Klinghoffer whose childlike high pitched vocals lends a ethereal quality to the album's melancholia. The album contains only seven tracks at an average of five minutes each which is a bold move even for an experimental artist like Frusciante.
The album is deeply electronica influenced with synthesisers and electronic drums as primary instruments. Frusciante returns to his trademark caterwailing from Niandra in "Walls" blended with heavy electronic beats in a somewhat painful track you wouldn't want to be seen listening to unless people already find you disturbing. "Afterglow" is arguably the most inspiring track on the album, finding a perfect balance between a fast paced dance backing and haunting vocals. "Shadows casting bodies, who knows which way things will go?" Frusciante's take on electronica is undoubtedly fresh and complexing for the listener but I feel the man works best when he keeps his music raw and untampered.

Curtains is the final quick release album of 2004, and rather aptly named too. Frusciante seems to have pulled himself from the depressive Sphere in the Heart of Silence towards a more acoustic orientated album. "The Past Recedes" is a predictable, soft centred track that is a little too perfect sounding for a Froo fan like myself. An official video for The Past Recedes was created, but it is a rather uninspiring piece where cameras pointlessly follow Frusciante round his boring LA house doing boring things like getting out of bed, eating a rissole and taking a nap. Watch out for some exciting shots of his kitchen sink and try not to hyperventilate! Joking aside the album is a massive improvement from "Sphere" and illustrates in finer detail how simplicity and unrefined peformances of songs leads to a purer and enjoyable sound. A clear example is "Ascension" which in no way is perfect (Frusciante's count up to the song is heard and the acoustics of the room are tinny) but it is a warm, bittersweet and spontaneous song that shows seems to wrap up the whole message of the album, that the deeply flawed side of humanity is the purest inspiration.

Although the six month album stint ceased here, it certainly wasn't the end of Frusciante's solo efforts. January 2009 saw the release of The Empyrean, a musical masterpiece to start the end of a decade. The record has been named a concept album by Frusciante himself, but it perhaps more subtle in its storyline than the more famous examples from prog rockers Pink Floyd and Genesis. The Empyrean is supposidely the story of two characters existing within a man's mind throughout his lifetime. It's not quite clear how this conclusion is met simply by listening to the album, like previous works of Frusciante his songs express a plethora of atmosphere without any tangible meaning. It's probably why his work remains so compelling.
The Empyrean literally means the highest point in heaven, and backed up by a string quartet and a handful of prominent musicians (Flea, Josh Klinghoffer and Johnny Marr from the Smiths) the album develops a celestial silky smooth weightlessness to Frusciante's sound.
Frusciante's cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" is a beautiful rendition and although it doesn't quite capture the intimacy and grief of the original, Frusciante makes it his own. It is an apt song for Frusciante who like Buckley was plunged into heroin addiction and it's references to Greek mythology link nicely with the Milton/Blake-esque theme of the album.
"Unreachable" is a quietly spectacular song and a pivotal scene in the story of The Empyrean. the protagonist wakes from the lull of "The Siren" and realises he is disconnected from everyone in the world. In "God" we see Fruscinate playing the role of the big man himself, explaining to the protagonist why he even creates life in the first place and not to give up just yet.
"So each day would be new I build you to sleep. That's the idea of dying but you'll just have to see." Of all of Frusciante's works, "God" a melodic feathery piece is the artist's own reconcilication with spirituality after a destroyed youth.
"Central" at 7.16 minutes long is the most lengthy and powerful song in the album, illustrating the protagonist's sudden desire to rid himself of apathy and fear to progress to his own Empyrean.

Essentially The Empyrean is a story of personal enlightenment, attaining heights that seemed impossible at one point. Being comfortable with your own existence and not denying yourself to life. Frusciante's style in The Empyrean is refined without an obsession over perfection. Vocals are distorted and instruments experimentented with but the album has a solid backbone which stretches his style into the sublime. Indeed it's Frusciante's greatest effort as of yet.

From the Shadows: John Frusciante's life through the albums Part Two

By 2004 Frusciante reached his musical peak, but it certainly wasn't the end of the road. Years after rehab and dental surgery Frusicante was ganing confidence in his talents and of all albums, Shadows Collide with People was the one that gave recognition of his songwriting talents, briefly glimpsed at in previous records. The flurry of guitar chords and electronic stratching in "Carvel" builds up to reveal Frusciante's voice has drastically improved since Niandres. The man hits high and low notes with ease, growls and roars the lyrics and is complimented by a high scaling pop sound. If I had one word to describe this album it would be "healthy". Frusciante is still concerned with his own journey and his climb back into normality, but the album gives us a sense he already climbed that steep slope. Shadows is a deeply honest, profound yet beautifully mellow record from a man who has been given a second chance for life.

Despite the success of Shadows, it was an incredibly costly and time consuming album to produce. Frusciante then decided he would go against the grain of pop album recording to write, produce and perform on six consecutive albums over six months. the idea would be that he would create a sound that was raw, minimal and spontaneous. The Will to Death was the first of these six albums and personally a very high scorer in my books. Unlike Shadows every song is stripped down to it's fundamental core. No backing vocals, no layering of sounds.Just Frusciante and his friend Josh Klingoffer performing on a maximum of two takes for each song. The nakedness of the album gives a strange ethereal quality to every song, the lack of 'noise' means Frusciante's voice is shown to have matured and developed so much that it could carry the whole album by itself, and indeed listening to the vocals through one ear phone proves my theory. The short, slightly angsty "The Loop" is the birthplace of Frusciante's strange and paradoxical lyrics enterwined with built up vocals and guitar. Somehow it works. My favourite song of all of Frusciante's back catalogue is on this album, "The Days Have Turned." Turn it up high on your headphones at 2 in the morning and you might just get a glimpse of the quiet yet beautiful melancholia of the song.

Skipping the Ataxia albums (Frusciante and Klingoffer's sporadic band) we reach Inside of Emptiness released in October of the same year. Frusciante's sound hasn't changed much from The Will to Death, even the album is packaged in the same textured cardboard and eerie front cover. The album lacks the entertainment factor of Shadows and the innovation behind The Will to Death but each song has its own uniqueness and style. "A Firm Kick" is a pivotal song on the track list. It begins as a simple acoustic song, focused on his past regrets and misgivings (as many Froo tracks on the album do) but halfway in appears some poignant lyrics doubled with a beautiful electronic messy noise.

"I will play some light from the sun
The world by my side
I will see down as a forlorn maiden in the sky
And I will play a song of thunder you may recognize
You make a never
Thats forever
Knowing what you deny."

Frusicante has that special talent of making his music accessible and dare I say it, comforting in a way an audience can understand emotionally, but not figuratively. His lyrics are vague and whimsical, by not saying a lot, they somehow paint a masterpiece in the mind's eye.A Firm Kick is like a static white staircase ascending into the clouds then crashing down suddenly at your feet. It's a peculiar, mesmerising album, definitely worth a number of listens.

New York Kid to LA prodigy: John Frusciante's life through the albums

John Frusciante remains much of an enigma in the UK. Many people will know him as the guitarist from Red Hot Chili Peppers and being the man responsible for the rise and rise (the fall being his departure in 1992)of the band's popularity, but little know him as the well established solo artist that have many American RHCP followers into Froo fans, as I like to call them.

Frusciante's first solo album, Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt in 1994 wasn't the success many budding Froo fans expected to hear. Excessive drug taking and the overwhelming nature of sudden fame meant Frusciante, who was only 18 when he joined the band became disillusioned by the successes he achieved. Niandra Lades is a painful record to listen to. It almost feels intrusive to listen to Frusciante's wailing nonsensical words over his beautiful yet deeply melancholic guitar riffs, like rubbernecking at a roadside accident. Prominent songs on the album include "Mascara", which begins with with a methodical rhythm but slowly uncoils into a confused tangle of lyrics and melodies not unlike Fruscinate's own life unravelling at the seams. The creatively named "Your Pussy's Glued to a Building on Fire" with it's simplicist melody showcases more of Frusciante's powerful vocal talents which are ever more present in his later albums.

Niandra Lades was an album about a lifestyle choice gone wrong, a man on the brink of death. Luckily Frusciante managed to pull himself out of a serious heroin addiction, reunite with RCHP bandmates and release his solo debut From the Sounds Inside in 2001. The album which was free to download from his website meant Frusciante was reconnecting with fans after the alienation caused by Niandra Lades and second album Smile from the Streets you hold.

In the same year he released his third offical album, To Record Only Water for Ten Days which was astoundingly different from any previous releases. My strange habit of keeping labels on my albums tells me that I bought it for £16.99, a ludicrous amount of money for a CD, but that was the early noughties before anyone even heard of downloads. To Record is an album deeply influenced by synth pop and electronica as Frusciante experiments with a more concentrated and controlled sound. "Going Inside" is a fantastic kick off for album which illustrates to the listener Frusciante's need to take perspective of the past. The instrumental "Murderers" and "Ramparts" evoke a sense of eeriness through methodical synthsised drum beats but much of the album is very claustrophobic and dense with self absorption to listen to as a whole.

This concludes part one of my review of Frusciante's back catalogue, I will update with part two very shortly!

Ceremonies in the desert

“Long time ago
In the beginning
there were no white people in this world
there was nothing European.
And this world might have gone on like that
except for one thing:
witchery.”

Since reading Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony well over two years ago I've grown a fascination with New Mexico, USA. Even as the name suggests it has no individual identity, it's a state torn apart and sewn together with a plethora of conflicting races and nationalities.

Silko's novel written in 1977 tells the story of Tayo, a mixed race Pueblo man returning to Laguna, New Mexico after fighting in the second world war. Tayo is traumatised from his experiences, in particular the death of his cousin, Rocky who was fighting alongside him in the Philippines.

Tayo's desire to return to his homeland soon develops into a restlessness he cannot shake off. He and the other Pueblo veterans returning from the war realise the 'war hero' status is not theirs to own, it is the white man's. The Pueblo consciousness has been gradually eroded away and smoothed over by white ideologies. Ownership,boundaries. The life of the land becomes obsolete.

Silko intends to show New Mexico through a thick weave of stories and tales which expand, alter and intertwine to create the real consciousness of the state. Tayo's story is predominately linear but is littered with quick flashbacks of pre-war New Mexico and war time jungle conflicts as Tayo struggles to reclaim his roots in Laguna. Silko also merges ancient Pueblo stories within the novel, a central one being the story of the drought caused by Reed Woman leaving the earth.

The crux of Ceremony is the importance of these tales and the ability for Native Americans to adopt new ones. Tayo is shunned by many of his Pueblo contemporaries because of his half European, half Native American background. Like attitudes towards Tayo's bi-racial status, the Pueblos see the white man impregnating native land as a sign of change for the worse.

With the help of an Elder named Betonie, Tayo learns to deal with his post traumatic stress as brought on by the horrors of the war and the death of his cousin. Betonie is the true personification of New Mexico, of mixed Mexican and Pueblo decent he practices the native religion in a shack filled with Western pop cult: coca cola cans, newspapers, magazines overlooking white man's territory. Clearly the novel cannot avoid the overwhelming melancholy of the Pueblo in a land which is becoming unrecognisable to them, but Silko is optimistic (as a mixed race American herself) that a kind of acceptance and absorption of Western culture is necessary to progress.

Since reading Ceremony I have been mesmerized by the magical quality of New Mexico. From playing Uru (initially set in modern day New Mexico) to touring the plains on Google Maps for hours, it has been an obsession of mine to visit the state which boasts a whole load of nothingness (much of the desert remains uninhabited) but is brimming full of old world magic, stories and ceremony.

Uru Live: A game that ought not to be myst!

Adventure/logic game nerds have warmly welcomed the relaunch of Myst Online: Uru live. Me included.

Ok so it started in 2003 and despite the seven year gap not a lot has changed, but who's complaining? The Myst/Riven/Uru storylines have always been an integral part of the games as we see the developing and declining relationships with Atrus and his family in the bittersweet plot.

The original Myst and Riven games always had difficulty fitting the player into the plot. You have no name, no back history, not even a face, heck even the characters have no idea who you are. You are constantly approached with a suspicious sideways glance. "Who's this guy?" they say "Oh never mind, just fix this contraption for me will you?" In Uru live you and other players are special individuals called in to save the old civilisation of the D'ni by solving a number of logical puzzles.

What makes the story much more compelling is that instead of immersing the player into the beautiful, yet wholly fictional and unexplainable ages, the story of the D'ni interwines with the 'real world'. You begin the journey in New Mexico where remains of the D'ni civilisation were found in modern day, therefore sparking a development studio to create an educational video game called Myst. Nice twist eh?

Yeesha, Atrus's daughter from Myst III and IV appears in hologram form and fills you on your purpose to rebuild the D'ni Civilisation. "Sure, why not?" you say to yourself, "Nothing good on TV these days anyway."

Another difference from the original games is that it is set up in 3rd person format, i.e you create an avatar of yourself and watch your own bum wiggling in front of you as you gallop across the landscape. Granted, this had to be done to differeciante yourself from other online players but it rather strips the romantic mysterious nature of the game. Plus not a great deal of effort was made on characterisation, I feel like a Sim that has just eaten some bad ramen and had a bad trip into a psychdelic mindfield. This is why I keep 1st player mode on.

Ok so the biggie of the game, the online feature of course. It sort of works. Basically you can visit ages and solve problems on your own as normal without being disturbed by irritating people, but you can if you wish visit public ages where you can socialise with other players, get help for puzzles or frolic in buttercup fields with them, whatever. There is nothing worse than playing an MMORPG like World of Warcraft and being constantly ganked by some adolescent ass for lols or having to endure harassment from a gamer with a elf fetish. Uru is for the intellectual online gamer. You know the type, that mild mannered guy from accounting who sits at home in his M&S dressing gown reading War and Peace during game loads.

Don't let the online tag put you off if you are an avid Myst fan. The graphics are not as top grade quality as the previous games as expected in an RPG, but at least it gives you the freedom of exploring every weeny detail you couldn't beforehand. Plus the game and every age you visit is pretty damn huge.

Not bad at all for a game is which at present completely free to play online. Take that Wow, Conan, LOTR and all you other subscription games!

An Evil Cradling

"I think it was D.H Lawrence, speaking about the act of writing, who said that writers throw up their sickness in books."

Brian Keenan was a Northern Irish school teacher who came to Beruit, Lebanon to teach at it's prominent university in 1985. He certainly knew the dangers of working in country wrapped in political chaos, but he had no idea how much it would impact his own writings, teachings and relationships.

Keenan was captured and taken hostage by the Shi'ite the same year, and was passed about among several terrorist groups around Lebanon for five years before his safe release. In 1992 he wrote down his experiences in An Evil Cradling.

I was adamant to hate the book from first glance. I was assigned to read it for an English course at the time that Ken Bigley was captured and executed in Iraq. I was angry that the college would want to play on the sensationalist media ring around Bigley's death to encourage us to read about Keenan's hostage crisis, which occurred two decades ago. It didn't feel right for a 17 year old student to imagine themselves in Bigley's or Keenan's shoes like it was a museum of horrors.

Despite my intial misgivings I warmed to the book like I never thought I could. Keenan takes you right from the beginning of his life, he shows you he was no pompous self important Westerner poking about in another country's dealings. He grew up in a working class family in Belfast, he knew the terrors of living in a war strife country because he ws born in one. He was simply "jumping from one fire into another".

Keenan was captured on his way to work by a group of men with guns leapt out of an old Mercedes and bundled him into the back. Keenan spent his first few months of incarceration alone in a tiny cell with no explanation of his kidnapping. Chapters Into The Dark and Music are the most proflic within the book. As Keenan's rational mind begins to accept his situation, his semi conscious one takes flight. He begins to hallucinate and dream, he sinks himself into the microscopic world of his cell and is lulled into this new kind of reality. This explains the title of the book, An Evil Cradling, the familiarity and boundaries of an imprisoned man can make him fearful of ever leaving. In Music, Keenan listens to the rattling of the pipes and fans in his slapdash concrete hole and dances to an audial hallucination which seems to finally wake him from his adopted state.

The greatest introduction ever in the history of storytelling (and apparantly all true) is John McCarthy's first greeting to Keenan.
"Fuck me it's Ben Gunn." Gunn, being the wild straggly haired man in Robinson Crusoe who was forgotten by man, time, and readers of the book it seems.

It's more likely that you have heard of McCarthy, who was a 29 year old English television journalist when he was taken hostage. His position in the media and the furious release campaigns held by then girlfriend Jill Morell meant you couldn't read a newspaper or switch on the TV in England without hearing his name.

As the book progresses you learn more about Keenan and McCarthy's struggles. The beatings, the guards and their conflicted minds, the fear of never seeing the sunlight before they died. However terrible these things were, a love story begins to emerge. Despite Keenan's archetypal Irishness and resentment towards middle classers like McCarthy, their friendship evolves so much so that even a look or a insulting joke to one another would soothe the worst tortures the guards could offer. Keenan takes on a fatherly stance and urges the youthful McCarthy to have courage at the lowest points, and McCarthy checks Keenan's stubborness and aggressive stance when it could lead him into trouble.

The two men are moved into new cells around the country, sometimes joined by the American hostages and even Terry Waite, former spokesperson for the Archbishop of Canterbury, who despite travelling to Lebanon as an envoy became a hostage too. The interactions with the other imprisoned men shows just how Keenan and McCarthy's platonic relationship became an unconditional source of companionship which helped the men accept their situation.

These events happened almost three decades ago, and an Evil Cradling almost two, but it is still a relevant read. I am glad I never turned away from the book after all, because it has been the single most important piece of writing I have ever read. Keenan says he threw up his 'sickness' to write this memoir, to relive these awful events to act as a kind of therapy. He needed to do this to validate his experiences and to release them from his body and into a more universal consciousness. An Evil Cradling reveals the toxic existence of humanity, whether in lies in the East or Western world, but more importantly it shows companionship and unrelenting love are essential for human survival.

The sad case of the book

As promised I've stopped talking about games and moved further afield to have a gripe at a culture which is slowly forgetting books.

I left a certain chain store which boasted to be the 'biggest stationary retailer in the UK' last week. I was only a morning girl, but every time I walked into the shop it would fill me with dread and despair. And here are a few reasons why.

1. They used to make me wear a huge bright blue shirt with 'OMG LOTTERY, BUY YOUR DAMN TICKETS NOW YOU CRETINOUS PAUPERS!' or something along those lines scrawled in huge letters across my chest so a. every damn customer were coerced into buying a ticket and b. made it acceptable for creepy old men to stare at my chest as I counted out all their pennies for them.

2. Over the years the store which once was a tidy, civilised place to browse through books or pick up a few paintbrushes had started to resemble a huge bric a brac sale. Everything is loud and gawdy, the shelves are heaving with so many folders and papery shit they have dominoed and are left strewn across the gummy floor. Nothing is ever where it was supposed to be, hell even I could never find things for the customers!

3. Customers are ruder than ever these days, if a transaction isn't done at lightening speed then it is your fault. If the queues are long, if products are overpriced, if it's too cold, if it's too hot, if a certain shaped bag has run out, if the lighting isn't atmospheric, if the books don't dance off the shelves and nestle into the customer's arms singing soothing lullabies, then it is YOUR fault. I once had a man morph from a gentille old dear out shopping with his wife into a screaming, vein bursting scarlet faced gimp simply because the gift cards we sold did not come with envelopes. Of course you get the lovely chuckly customers who talk about the weather or the kind of day they are having and that's nice, but sadly single celled organisms floating at the bottom of the ocean get more respect than you do.

4. Since when has paper become so damn expensive? 'oh a writing pad, that will be 4.99, that tiny, slighly sparkly greeting card, that's 6.99' - wha?? Paper is so overpriced in these stores it would be cheaper to chisel 'Happy Golden Anniversary Deirdre and Bert' into slabs of marble and send them to respective loved ones, prefably not by post.

5. What counts as 'books' these days stretches far beyond the realms of sanity. I don't know whether to blame the general public for dumbing down or the media/retail corporate bastards for shovelling flavouress celebrity gruel in our throats, but top sellers consist of autobiographies of has-been tv stars and pop tartlette nonsense like the bloody Twilight Saga. It fills me with a great sense of despair, and it's saddening to see good fiction go to waste when entities (I reject the notion that she's a person but figure of media imagination) like Jordan get into the top ten for crappy stories about twee little ponies that are not even written by he/she/it.

6. I don't like the idea of a stationary shop selling so much frigging chocolate and foodstuffs. My counter was microscopic enough without towers of dairy bars swaying recklessly each time a customer breezed past. You couldn't walk anyway with tripping over a half opened box of 600 Guylian belgian shells. Thank God I left before Easter.