King Crimson‘s manager David Singleton has urged fans to remain cautious about the prospect of a new studio album from the band.
The internet was abuzz Monday morning on the back of comments attributed to guitarist and vocalist Jakko Jakszyk in an interview with online music magazine Goldmine, ostensibly about his brand new solo record, Son Of Glen, in which he was asked about joining King Crimson in 2013, a decade after he’d founded the 21st Century Schizoid Band to perform Crimson songs alongside band alumni Ian McDonald, Mel Collins, Peter Giles and Michael Giles.
“It was an amazing thing to have done, and in a way, part of it’s still happening,” Jakszyk replied. “As we speak, we’re doing a King Crimson studio album. When that will come out and what format or how – that’s beyond my brief. But yeah, we’ve been doing it piecemeal, and then a couple of months ago, the management said, ‘Can we?’ So, yeah. I’ve been recording that with a view to it coming out in some format at some point. But who knows when?”
Now Singleton has made the following statement on his social media pages. “I have seen there has been lots of postings about the possibility of a new King Crimson album following Jakko’s interview.
Addressing this very question before he died, Bill Rieflin posed the excellent question, “why make a studio album? There are excellent live recordings of all the songs out there already.”
One possible answer would be an album the very sound of which no-one has ever heard before. A sound driven by the three drummers. And it is true that those drummers have now recorded studio versions of their parts – separately, so that there is perfect separation.
So there is indeed the seed of a new recording. Whether it is an album, whether it sees the light of day, whether it is something else is unknown. As is the outcome of any creative process.
So yes, recordings have taken place. We are building a new studio, and when it is complete I am looking forward to seeing what may, or may not, exist. Getting excited about the possibility of a new album, as has been happening in some quarters, is however, somewhat premature. Carts before horses.”
To be fair, this isn’t the first time Jakszyk has mentioned the band have been working in the studio on new material; he’s said as much to Prog several times in recent years. It’s also clear he was simply answering one of many questions in the course of an interview, but it is the first time the comments have spread like wildfire across the Internet.
What is definitely happening is that Jakszyk, Fripp & Collins’ 2011 album A Scarcity Of Miracles, which acted as a catalyst for the most recent King Crimson reunion, and is currently unavailable, is definitely going to be reissued.
“There’s a version of it that’s about to come out with loads and loads of extra stuff,” Jakszyk says. “Because of the nature of how we made that record, there’s lots of improvisation and seriously alternate versions of things that we didn’t release.”