King Crimson singer and guitarist Jakko Jakszyk revealed the band are working on a new studio album – although he has no idea if or when it might be released.

He said the final live lineup of Robert Fripp’s band, which last toured in 2021, had been building the record over time.

Jakszyk unveiled the development while talking about his addition to Crimson in 2013, after having loved the group for years and working on the collaborative album A Scarcity of Miracles with Fripp two years earlier.

“When Robert eventually phoned… to inform me that he decided to re-form the band and to ask if I would be the lead singer and second guitarist, one of the first people I phoned excitedly… was a bass player called Nick Beggs. Nick’s response was, ‘Well, that’s the longest audition in rock history!’”

He reflected: “It was an amazing thing to have done, and in a way, part of it’s still happening. 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?’

“I’ve been recording that with a view to it coming out in some format at some point. But who knows when?”

Addressing the idea of some form of studio recording by the last incarnation of King Crimson, 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 those drummers have now recorded studio versions of their parts – separately, so that there is perfect separation.

So there is 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. Getting excited about the possibility of a new album, as has apparently been happening, is somewhat premature. Carts before horses.