In case you’d forgotten, the new A Perfect Circle album Eat The Elephant comes on April 20, and as we’d expect both Billy and Maynard are featuring quite heavily in various forms of media at the moment as the promote it. Two of the better articles I’ve come across recently are below.
The first is an interview with Revolver magazine, in which Maynard speaks at length about the writing and recording process for the album:
On Eat the Elephant, Howerdel worked with producer Dave Sardy. And rather than collaborate side-by-side with Keenan on each track from beginning to end, most of the vocals were done in Arizona and engineered by Puscifer’s Mat Mitchell. It’s a process Keenan now prefers for all his projects. The singer also traveled to the guitarist’s home studio in L.A. “to kind of nudge things forward” and go over ideas.
Keenan was back at the vineyard in time for the harvest, and traded recordings back and forth with Howerdel online. “We were actually on parallel paths, getting things done,” says Keenan. “When I start to dig into the content, the melodies, the words,” the singer explains, he becomes something more like “an Italian mother in the kitchen: ‘Get the fuck out. Dinner’s not ready, get out. Need the kids out of the kitchen!'”
There’s a few light hearted jabs at Tool in the interview as well, and it’s well worth the read.
The second is an interview with Matt Pinfield:
It’s a pretty length discussion about A Perfect Circle, touring and various other interests of Maynard’s (don’t expect Tool chat).