In a new LA Weekly interview, Maynard James Keenan is described as being in a ‘sleek North Hollywood recording studio.’ The interview took place before A Perfect Circle’s tour, but it is not specified if he was in the studio working on new Tool or A Perfect Circle material.
Keenan did confirm that his A Perfect Circle bandmate Billy Howerdel has been sending him instrumental demos, but deadpans, “I’m a prick when it comes to that. … I’ll strip it down to the click track and just the bass and [say] let me play, vocally, with just that piece and see if we can build it up from nothing.”
He also said, “Now Billy’s in a different place, I’m in a different place — it’s time to see how we can challenge each other to draw outside the box that we kind of put ourselves in,” Keenan says. “He’s done his own work outside of A Perfect Circle; he’s done some producing, some scoring, [has] his own band, Ashes Divide. So he’s been out there and he’s actually had to be on my end of it … [so] it’s a much more stable, solid relationship now.”
A Perfect Circle are currently on tour, with a Tool tour also on the books for 2017.
