1) In Your Eyes; 2) 909 Day; 3) Glowe; 4) FM; 5) In My Light
Round one for Frusciante's re-invention. An EP of one-offs before the actual album, but somehow this pulls the trick far better than its big brother.
Key tracks: "909 Day", "In My Light"
John Frusciante officially confirmed his departure from the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the end of 2009, though he'd been unofficially out of the picture for a little bit longer than that. One of the reasons cited was getting tired of the rock star life and the music he was playing; so, after moving away from the Peppers, he pushed his guitar to the side and started focusing on electronic music. 2012 would also see the debut release of Frusciante's new chapter, PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone, but it was first preceded by Letur-Lefr EP: described as the pathway to Frusciante realising his new vision, it was meant to consist of random songs that Frusciante created while still developing the sound he was aiming for. Now, you can easily make the argument that it probably benefits from its shorter length, but for a set of trial runs Letur-Lefr is actually a far tighter body of work than the main album.
Much like PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone, Letur-Lefr's theme is Frusciante exploring new territories, but unlike the subsequent album, Letur-Lefr is much more playful about it. Perhaps chalk that down to it effectively being a collection of things done just for fun, but where PBX has the sound of an ambitious project being let down by its creator's choice of production, Letur-Lefr is giddy with new ideas. There's a fair few ideas new to Frusciante's solo records scattered across even only these five songs, and particularly from a production standpoint the new era seems to be as much about Frusciante fitting himself into that role above being the sole frontman. There's a great hip-hop influence throughout and a handful of rappers, most prominently RZA and Kinetic9, feature throughout and on "FM" Frusciante takes the backseat completely from the way of the guests, which acts like a surprisingly successful try-out for a new job as a hip-hop producer (Frusciante would in fact go on to produce a full album for Black Knights later on, though I've not heard how well this turned out).
Synthesizers and drum machines aren't a new thing for Frusciante but the heavy emphasis on drum loops in particular really characterises both the sound of the EP as well as its playfulness. The brief instrumental "Glowe" is effectively just a series of different sampled loops glued onto each other by a simple guitar line, but even at barely a minute long with little in the way of a grand idea, it sounds like a ton of fun was had piecing the jigsaw together and it manages to create a hectic groove for itself. "909 Day" is a similar sort of near-instrumental musical quilt collection, and has a similar infectious joy to its wild abandon of throwing everything into the mix - but then halfway flicks into a drastically different gear, its synth stabs moving towards something more epic and atmospheric as the vocals return.
The biggest difference between the EP and the subsequent album are how those abrupt musical changes and beat switches, which would become the signature elements for this electronic period, sound far more more natural and in control here - which, once again, is the opposite of what you'd expect from a series of supposed experiment takes. Perhaps because these were written and recorded during a transitional period of sorts, the songs still take influence from the songwriting and arrangement ideas of Frusciante's prior decade of music, but they're now fearlessly mashed together with all the new ideas he's hatching. If the big center of the EP is the wild west of those ideas, then it's the bookends that really shine the strengths of the new course. Frusciante dubbed his new style as "progressive synth-pop" and "In Your Eyes" and "In My Light" exemplify this the best: both are almost hook-driven and sound both familiar as well as unique to Frusciante's back catalogue, and while they twist and turn and change shape, there's always a red line running throughout them. "In My Light" is particularly brilliant - it's probably the best thing to come out of this entire period for Frusciante, primarily because of its first half that for an all-too-brief moment becomes a stunningly glorious ascent of swirling synths and falsetto. The song then quickly leaves that section behind and takes the flight following that ascent, racing around briefly like it's already doing victory laps, before settling down again. It goes from aching to awestruck and back again in an impressive instant.
At little over ten minutes Letur-Lefr is over annoyingly quickly, but the more I listen to this chapter of Frusciante's 2012 release couplet, the more it feels like this is the more important piece purely in terms of its quality and the enjoyment derived from it. PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone, while enjoyable to a degree, is a direct continuation of the themes explored here but the wrong lessons have been learned, leading to an ultimatly disjointed album. Letur-Lefr is chaotic as well, but the actual songs sound positively empowered by it while still holding together within their own confinements. You can tell it's a practice round by how it sounds like a sketch page of ideas dotted around, but Frusciante clearly had a really good time trying out each of those ideas and that results in a set of short but really good songs, the likes of which I would happily listen for another ten minutes or more.
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