1) So Would Have I; 2) Three Thoughts; 3) I Go Through These Walls; 4) Murmur; 5) Saturation (Unmastered); 6) Interstate Sex; 7) Dying (I Don't Mind); 8) The Battle of Time; 9) With Love; 10) I Will Always Be Beat Down; 11) Fallout (Unmastered); 12) Penetrate Time (Lou Bergs); 13) Slow Down; 14) Nature Falls; 15) Beginning Again; 16) Leave All the Days Behind; 17) Place to Drive; 18) How High; 19) Fallout (Demo); 20) Leaving You; 21) Sailing Outdoors
Demos and outtakes from the To Record Only Water sessions. Rough but if you liked that album, there's plenty more where that came from here.
Key tracks: "So Would Have I", "Interstate Sex", "I Will Always Be Beat Down"
Just to prove a point on John Frusciante riding a tidal wave of inspiration following his successful recovery from drugs, To Record Only Water for Ten Days was just the tip of the ice berg of the initial batch of Frusciante 2.0 solo recordings. While the 16 songs of that album were ones John decided to release officially, he soon followed up the album with free internet release for fans: a 21-song collection of outtakes from the same sessions, later dubbed as From the Sounds Inside.
While To Record Only Water had a lo-fi nature to it already thanks to its barebones production and limited, Frusciante-centered arrangements, From the Sounds Inside takes it a notch further. It's a ragtag collection of loose ends and discarded songs, with varying recording qualities throughout and lacking the (limited) polish their parent album had, with audible static and fuzz covering most of them. Most of the songs float around 1-2 minutes and are more sketch-like in nature, with a few longer songs like "Three Thoughts" and "Interstate Sex" breaking from the norm. The actual style is exactly the same as on To Record Only Water, largely built around Frusciante's voice, guitars and drum machines; few To Record tracks even pop up on Sounds, with an unmastered version of "Saturation" and "Fallout" in both unmastered and demo forms. The differences to the album versions are minimal, apart from the fuzzier sound quality, so their inclusion here is confusing at best.
Otherwise it's surprisingly good though, and proof that more of the same isn't unwelcome if you loved the first part. Once you get past the rough recording quality (which may not be an issue to some, and I've certainly grown accustomed to it), there's strengths to be found in the songs. It is obviously a collection of discarded and undeveloped material, but to the credit of Frusciante's creative boom at the time he's managed to inject each song with at least something of note, whether it's simply a great guitar part or vocal melody appearing for a moment, a neat outro or a particularly memorable drum machine arrangement, or in the best case something great that lasts throughout the song. Most of the tracks blend together but it's a thoroughly enjoyable blend, with many of the same traits that made To Record Only Water so strong appearing throughout, even if in a diluted form. And there are some obvious peaks: the before-mentioned "Three Thoughts" and "Interstate Sex" stand out because they've clearly been very fully fleshed out in every other way than production, "So Would Have I" is strong enough to have made decent company in the parent album with a little further development thanks to its subtle but strong key melody, and "I Will Always Be Beat Down" gets particularly good when a wonderful synthesizer pattern appears during its final half.
Had these songs been honed down and perfected, perhaps the quantity slightly reduced and having them flow better as an album, you could easily have had a really good 'real' follow-up album to To Record Only Water. On its current form it's a ramshackle collection but it's a really good one at that; something extra clearly for the fans, but there's enough quality in it to grant it a clear longevity. It's a group of rough gems hiding underneath one another, and if you enjoyed its parent album it's a logical thing to try and find. Sadly this has yet to be released "properly" despite Frusciante occasionally mentioning his wishes to do - even the cover art up there isn't official, just one of the commonly accepted fan-made variants, and the tracklist names vary as the original files were untitled. It's a shame this hasn't been the case - if it was, it could hold up as something beyond just an obscure hardcore fan treat.
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