When I recorded the first 2 Trickfinger records, I had recently discovered that you could make electronic music in a room with a bunch of synced machines going at the same time, record it on a CD burner and have a finished track. I've heard this process described as “overdubbing into the air”. It was as exciting to me as my first 4 track was when I was 14. I wasn't trying to be good, or original. I was just excited that music could be made that way; it felt like I was a whole group of musicians playing together… or like I was jamming with ghosts of myself. This has actually been a very common way of making electronic music since the 80s, particularly in the main pioneering genres like Chicago Acid and Detroit Techno, but anyways I didn't figure it out until 2006. In 2007, I started doing it myself, which resulted in what was eventually released as Trickfinger, and Trickfinger II. I was just home from tour and was still in the middle of recording The Empyrean.
A couple of years later I started making music by overdubbing onto a computer, but using the same machines. I tried to make music that didn't sound like anything else. I saw a way of combining Progressive Rock and Synth Pop which nobody had done. And I was combining my songwriting and guitar playing with these old machines in a way which I was sure was unique. I had reached a point where it was more important to do something original than to do something good, whatever “good” means.
Some of this music did not get a proper release, and is compiled here as the vinyl record High Low. I don't think I have ever tried so hard at making music as I did during that period. This in contrast to those two Trickfinger records, where I wasn't trying at all. There’s something to be said for both mental states. When you're in one, the other seems impossible. I was really pushing myself on High Low. Looking back, it was as if I had an audience inside myself, driving me to go beyond my abilities, while at the same time I had a total disregard for any concept of an actual audience. It was one of those periods in life where things come together in a certain way that feels natural at the time, but seems foreign in retrospect. It felt like I was going to die if I didn't do something musically different.
The fourth record in this box is me breaking in a new mixing console, making live-to-stereo music. The record is called Rotation, and it is all new music. These tracks are more in the “not trying” category, since we're on that subject. I had just come home from tour, and was just really glad to be in the studio with my machines.
Acid Test thought it would be nice to do a box set commemorating the 10th anniversary of the release of Trickfinger, and so we put together this box set, with homemade cover art.
John Frusciante 2026
Rotation
A1. Tsych
A2. Crane
A3. Now P-PL
B1. Talking SH-7
B2. Rotation Of Weight
High Low
A1. Hew Branderson
A2. Motiern
A3. Culminate
B1. Singular Scope
B2. Genex
B3. Unending
Trickfinger
A1. After Below
A2. Before Above
B1. Rainover
B2. Sain
C1. 85h
C2. 4:30
D1. 100mc4
D2. Phurip
Trickfinger II
A1. Shift Sync
A2. Ruche
A3. Exclam
B1. Hasan
B2. Cuh
B3. Stall
