Bleep

With the Maya LP John Frusciante delivers the kind of complex breakcore, IDM and junglist thrills that we have got from his Trickfinger project down the years. However, while those who’ve come to associate Frusciante’s name with expressive guitar music may be startled by the change of pace, Frusciante’s reasoning behind releasing these tracks under his own name is as personal as anything else in his long and distinguished catalogue - Maya is named after and dedicated to the artist’s cat who passed away not long before the album’s release.

Like Frusciante’s Trickfinger output, Maya is an endlessly inventive record which is in dialogue with post-rave innovators like Bogdan Raczynski or Venetian Snares. Running at breakneck bpms throughout, it thrills in how it alchemises tunes from twinkling synthesiser pads, booming bass tones and swirling vortexes of percussion. While the album may be shadowed by a tragic event, this is not a sombre record. Even the tunes which verge on darkness - the heavy-hitting ‘Amethbowl’, for instance - are executed with a sense of playful warmth. Despite the high speeds and occasionally abrasive timbres of Frusciante’s productions here, there is also a gentleness about Maya which, when spun out to LP length, makes for a hugely satisfying listening experience.

Maya, John Frusciante’s latest album under his own name, finds the polymath musician bringing the breakcore junglism of his Trickfinger project out into the open.