John Frusciante
Letur-Lefr

THE REVIEW

Since he had once again left the Peppers in 2009, the good John Frusciante seemed to have disappeared once more. Three years of absolute silence, apart from some very experimental featuring here and there, quite useless in most cases, in productions of ethnic, electronic, or hip-hop music. Then, in 2012, the great return: a 5-song EP titled "Letur-Lefr" released in July, which precedes an upcoming album (September 2012) titled "PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone".

With Fruscio, you never know what to expect: a personality beyond any scheme or categorization, often brilliant, sometimes vacuous and dispersive, he has alternated moments of absolute perfection with others of incomprehensible senselessness. 

The reason for the new departure from the Red Hot was the impossibility of fully developing his solo experiments while staying in the group. This EP is the confirmation of the absolute goodness of this decision. While Kiedis and company have now fossilized into harmless radio-friendly funk-pop, John explores new shores yet to be discovered to focus his infinite inspiration and his undisputed talent.

This said EP is indeed an experimental work and not immediately comprehensible despite its brevity (about 15 minutes), characterized by a strange contamination of electronic, synth pop, and hip hop. The first track "In Your Eyes" is simply absurd, after a not-so-shocking start, dominated by synths and drum machines accompanying the strange and disorienting voice of ours (which I personally adore to madness) that as usual alternates deep singing and falsetto, the synths seem to go completely insane, leading to a second part of the song dominated by the counter-tempos of the drum machines, until reaching another moment of madness: John's voice continues to sing a very melodic refrain, while the percussion goes crazy again seemingly at random, until it stops: "You are the sun to me" sings John, addressing his wife, and finally, his guitar is heard, concluding the song in a delicate "frusciantesque" final.

The following "909 Day" is almost entirely instrumental in the first part, where the most illustrious guest of the record, the legendary Wu Tang Clan producer RZA, makes an appearance, and will be heard again later. The next "Glowe" is a short but beautiful instrumental interlude, introducing the fourth track "FM", a hip-hop piece on which various guest artists rap, including dear RZA once again. An unusual yet very beautiful track, also featuring some Humphrey Bogart samples in the finale.

The final track "In My Light" is perhaps the most brilliant pearl of the album, a track dominated by dreamlike synths (with some vague echoes of Aphex Twin) and Frusciante's falsetto, dueting with RZA in the chorus. A beautiful song and a great vocal performance by John.

I adore Frusciante to madness, but my judgment of this first taste of his new musical direction is not at all tainted by easy and obtuse enthusiasm from an irreducible fan. Besides the music, here is primarily to appreciate the sincerity and honesty of an Artist in the true sense of the word, who is not afraid to put himself back in the game in every new work trying new things each time and exploring new musical territories, disregarding any commercial logic but making music for the sole pleasure of doing it, instead of resting comfortably on his laurels as his fellow peppersians have done.