Info for the new box set
https://acidtestrecords.bandcamp.com/album/in-a-box
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