John Frusciante releases new album opener "Brand E"

"Brand E" follows on from earlier tracks "Usbrup Pensul" and "Amethblowl", and arrives with a Amalia Irons-directed video that sees Frusciante act as an alien observer alongside the blind follower, aka Lee Bootee.

Frusciante's new song is produced by Aura T-09.

Frusciante's upcoming album is named after his cat Maya who recently passed away. He says, "Maya was with me as I made music for 15 years, so I wanted to name it after her. She loved music, and with such a personal title, it didn't seem right to call myself Trickfinger, somehow, so it's by John Frusciante."

Speaking about the process, Frusciante explains, "For a full year before I started this record, I worked within self-imposed limitations and rules that made the music-making process as difficult as possible, programming for programming's sake. After a full year of that, I decided to make things easier, to the degree that I could regularly finish tracks I enjoyed listening to, while continuing many of the practices I'd developed. Throughout the recording of Maya, I would prepare to make each track very slowly, but would finish tracks very quickly. I'd spend weeks making breakbeats, souping up a drum machine, making DX7 patches, and so on. By the time an idea came up that seemed like the beginning of a tune, I had a lot of fresh elements ready to go."

He says of the change in his music, "I don't have that interest in singing or writing lyrics like I used to. The natural thing when I'm by myself now, is to just make music like the stuff being released this year. I really love the back and forth with machines and the computer."