Flea, photo by Gus Van Sant

Flea has announced his debut solo studio album, Honora. Due to arrive on March 27 via Nonesuch, the iconic Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist’s first independent offering is a radical departure into kinetic jazz atmospheres and the culmination of an artistic vision three decades in the making. To realize this vision, the bandleader enlisted a stacked ensemble of luminaries in rock and jazz, including Thom Yorke, who adds crystalline lead vocals and keys to the new single “Traffic Lights.”

Before he picked up the bass at 16 to join what would become the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea’s first musical love was jazz trumpet. As he neared his 60th birthday, he recognized that the trumpet-based project he’d imagined and forestalled to train on the horn since 1991, “an instrumental record with deep hypnotic grooves, trippy melodies layered on top, meditations on a groove,” would never come to pass if he couldn’t commit to it in the present. Flea resolved to practice on the horn daily for two years, then take his ideas to the studio, regardless of where he’d wound up.

Flea composed (save for covers like Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” and Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You”) and arranged the album and plays trumpet and bass throughout. The elite team animating the music alongside him includes producer and saxophonist Josh Johnson, Tortoise’s guitarist Jeff Parker, saxophonist Rickey Washington (Kamasi’s father), drummer Deantoni Sparks, trombonist Vikram Devasthali, bassist Anna Butterss and vocalist Chris Warren, as well as Nick Cave, Bright Eyes’ Nate Walcott and his Atoms for Peace bandmates Mauro Refosco and Yorke.

In a release, Flea shares that he was nervous that the ensemble would see him as a non-playing motherf*cker, charlatan, rock poseur or fan,” but “it turns out they were all the most genuinely supportive people, moving me deeply and daily with their generous spirits…Sitting in a room and playing the music with them made me feel like I was on drugs. I was buzzing, tripping and floating around the studio. I love them, they truly gave of themselves. I bow all the way down.”

“Traffic Lights” follows the spiraling, spastic meltdown of lead single “A Plea” with a buoyant, thrumming simmer. Flea’s lithe horn bobs and weaves amid his jumbled bass, Sparks’ fluttering percussion and Yorke’s sensitive tenor, maintaining an alert and curious tone. “Deantoni and I played what became ‘Traffic Lights’ the first day,” Flea reflected on the song’s origins. Something about it reminded me of Atoms for Peace, so I sent it to Thom.”

“Just knowing him, I thought it would be a rhythm and a sensibility that he would relate to. And I was right, he did. With a gorgeous melody and the words, you know, about living in the ‘upside down’ and how do you make sense of things when we’re getting all this fake shit and real shit? Everyone has their ways of dealing with the world. But he’s just the warmest, free flowing, jamming motherf*cker.”

Honora is available to pre-order and pre-save now. Listen to “Traffic Lights” here, and watch the animated visualizer by Nespy5euro below. Read on for the album’s full tracklist.

Honora – Flea:

01 Golden Wingship

02 A Plea

03 Traffic Lights

04 Frailed

05 Morning Cry

06 Maggot Brain

07 Wichita Lineman

08 Thinkin Bout You

09 Willow Weep for Me

10 Free As I Want to Be