John Frusciante

On his third album as Trickfinger, John Frusciante makes the jump from Acid Test to its leftfield sub-label, Avenue 66, to unleash the full scope of his vision. On She Smiles Because She Presses The Button, the legendary, LA-based cult figure, presents his most diverse yet cohesive album to date.

Live performance from rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, recorded in July 2011. The concert features songs such as 'Scar Tissue', 'Californication' and 'By the Way'.
Few rock groups of the '80s broke down as many musical barriers and were as original as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Creating an intoxicating new musical style by combining funk and punk rock together (with an explosive stage show to boot), the Chili Peppers spawned a slew of imitators in their wake, but still managed to be the leaders of the pack by the dawn of the 21st century.

The Mars Volta - Amputechture (2006) [Universal Distribution]
EACRip | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 535 MB | MP3 @320 -> 181 MB | Full HQ Artwork Scans Included
© Universal Distribution | 7214 | Experimental Rock / Progressive Rock / Hard Rock

The album is little different than their two previous atom bombs, De-Loused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute — tense and anxious, continually pushing the boundaries of extreme production, with long periods of dynamics that rise ever higher, followed by an explosion of release (usually screaming hard rock with storms of atonal brass and horns). The album opens with "Vicarious Atonement," five minutes of spectral effects and piercing guitar that gets a boost at the beginning of the next track, "Tetragrammaton," and then blooms into full riffing glory after a few more minutes (and they're still nowhere near the end of the 16-minute track). John Frusciante, eccentric genius from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, returns on guitar, but Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez exert so much control over the sound of Mars Volta that Frusciante makes virtually no individual impression on this record, although most of the guitar work is his. (Granted, his presence leaves Rodriguez-Lopez open for more intricate work on production.) The Mars Volta are one of the most intriguing bands in rock, but their huge musical power is often deflected by Bixler-Zavala's conceptual themes (which are difficult to follow, but also, perversely, impossible to ignore) and blitzkrieg dynamics that are either dialed down to one or up to ten (but rarely in-between).

Losing John Frusciante for a second time doesn’t send the Red Hot Chili Peppers into a tailspin. By now, the Chili Peppers shed guitarists like a second skin, changing their outer layer but retaining their inner core. Such is the case with I’m with You, the band’s first album since 2006’s Stadium Arcadium. If that double-disc was defined by its unwieldy sprawl, its songs spewed not sequenced, I’m with You is characterized by its focus, both within individual tunes and the songs as a whole…