Through the sharing of this one photograph Mr Lockey has spilled the beans, and it has me wondering if this was deliberate?
This could be one of the shortest lived Editors mysteries to date. 3 days ago Tom posted a picture of a Los Angeles freeway with this tagline:-
"“Los Angeles. Editors recording session with an old friend. Here we go! x"
Cue speculation. Who was the "old friend"? I'm sure you probably had your own theories as to who it could be, I certainly did, but the frontrunner quickly became their previous producer on An End has a Start, Mr Jacknife Lee. This came from some sleuthing by Hannah who noticed that Tom started following Garret on Instagram this week. Then the above photograph appeared on Instagram courtesy of Justin, showing Elliott and Russell in a confined space with instruments and fairy lights. At first glance it's a simple capture of a band at work in a studio setting somewhere. Nothing else to see here, move along.
If you're a long time fan of this band then you remember all the times in the past when they've published photographs that seemed unremarkable, but turned out to be very important indeed. I could be way off base but I really think they take great delight in occasionally communicating with their fans covertly. For example, there was a strategically placed whiteboard that just happened to contain a list of unreleased songs they shared during the In Dream sessions. By the way I'm aware that for me to say that I believe the band are secretly communicating directly with fans through Instagram, makes me sound like one of the those slightly nutty looking guys that you see in the park who wear tin foil hats and scream at pigeons becuase their toaster told them to do it. Rest easy, true believer. I am not that guy. Well, most of the time. I have evidence.
If you look to the left of the picture below, there's a synthesizer beside the large red guitar. It's set up in front of a white board and you get a sideways view of it:-
If you zoom right in on the photo, something very interesting is written on the side of that synth:-
"Jacknife"
I feel like most of the events around this band are haphazard and spontaneous. They move forward and situations just present themselves, they just happen naturally, but other times there's a definite calculation on their part. It could be oversight or coincidence that this appeared in the shot, or they might just be messing with their fans again. They know that some of us are way, way too deep in all of this to just cast a cursory glance over things. As for the photographer, I can't believe that someone with such a fully formed artistic eye for details as Mr Lockey, who has consistently demonstrated this skill not just in photographs but also in film would take a shot like this and not be totally aware of its composition. To quote Nothingness:-
I'm not buying it...
So it looks like the msytery has been solved, but before we start preparing ourselves for a definite Jacknife Lee production on E7 consider this. This might just be a demo session to see how the songs sound when touched by the hand of Garret. It might work out, it might not. Remember that this is the band who went to Crear to demo new material and ended up self-producing an entire album. Plans can be altered. So unless both parties are happy with what they hear, this could begin and end very quickly. Conversely, if the sessions prove to be productive then this could be the official beginnings of the next record. Also note that they have live dates coming up, so the fact that they are recording means they may have new material that needs road testing.
We should also remember that there's a precedent for Editors using the same producer on two separate albums, or at least attempting to. The Weight of Your Love was originally begun as a project with Flood at the mixing desk during 2011-2012 prior to Jacquire King becoming involved. This was of course the last block of recording with Chris, and the songs therein have attained mythical status due to them having never been heard outside the band and their people. One of the after effects of those sessions was that the band became one guitarist lighter and almost disintegrated completely, before regrouping with Justin and Elliott to pull it out of the fire and get the record back on track. A close call. So while this may feel like something brand new they have ambled down this avenue before, I just hope it bears more positive results than the chaos that accompanied the last time it happened. Stay tuned, I suspect this story will develop further soon...
brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x
