(2020) Jakko M Jakszyk - Secrets & Lies


Review:
Life often unfolds in unexpected ways. For some, like Jakko M. Jakszyk, it has taken some truly surprising twists and turns. That the 62 year-old multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter has attained considerably greater visibility in the last ten years than in the previous 35 has, to say the least, righted a significant wrong. Which makes the release of Secrets & Lies, Jakszk’s first solo album since the The Bruised Romantic Glee Club (Iceni, 2006) and its 2009, self-released companion piece, Waves Sweep the Sand, cause for celebration. Jakszyk’s history on the UK music scene, crossing genres and gradually finding his way into circles occupied by some of those who were musical heroes during his formative years, has demonstrated a slow but inexorable and inevitable path to where he is now. As lead singer, guitarist, and occasional flautist and keyboardist in the current seven-piece King Crimson lineup, Jakszyk has toured, barring the current year’s pandemic restrictions, every year since 2014. The longest-lasting lineup in the group’s lengthy, off again/on again career, Jakszyk has also been a member of its most unusual three-drummer front line incarnation. Many believe that this current lineup is also the band’s best. That’s no mean feat, considering a fifty-plus year career that has seen the group shift gears so many times that even the reductionist progressive rock label of its groundbreaking debut, In the Court of the Crimson King (Panegyric, 1969), has been rendered far too constraining. Jakszyk first came to attention in the UK through 64 Spoon’s curious blend of disco and West Coast pop and rock, all filtered through progressive rock and classical influences. The band ultimately broke up in 1980, after all attempts to fit its stylistic square peg into the music industry’s round hole failed, and to which Jakszyk has dryly reflected: “They say that success is largely down to timing. Well, we timed it perfectly. We were the wrong band at the wrong time.” Still, 64 Spoons, and Jaksyzk in particular, came to the attention of some of the guitarist’s heroes, most notably former Hatfield and the North/National Health keyboardist Dave Stewart and drummer Pip Pyle. This led to Jakszyk’s brief tenure, with Stewart, Pyle and bassist Rick Biddulph, in the short-lived Rapid Eye Movement. Between numerous attempts at a solo record that were ultimately scuttled for a variety of reasons, Jakszyk spent four years as guitarist for Level 42 in the early ’90s, a nanosecond with the Kinks, and some time with bassist/singer/songwriter Tom Robinson, the latter resulting in the pop-centric We Never Had It So Good (Musidisc, 1990). He also collaborated with Peter and Kristoffer Blegvad, John Greaves, and Anton Fier in the short-lived New York-based band The Lodge, which released its lone album, The Smell of a Friend (Island), in 1988. But if Jakszyk’s career seemed, at the time, to be a frustrating mix of what ifs and what could have beens, he remained persistently active. He finally released an EP, The Kingdom of Dust, and his first full-length solo album, Mustard Gas And Roses, in 1994 on the Resurgence imprint. Prior to that, Jakszyk collaborated with drummer Gavin Harrison, classical Indian singer/percussionist Pandit Dinesh and renowned Pentangle alum, double bassist Danny Thompson, in Dizrhythmia, releasing an impressive eponymous Antilles debut in 1988. That album was something of a turning point for Jakszyk, fusing world music with art rock concerns and featuring guests including Dave Stewart, singer Peter Blegvad and pedal steel guitarist B.J. Cole. Dizrhythmia was such a good experience for the band that it reunited, in 2016, for the stellar, self-released Dizrhythmia Too, with pianist Dave Stewart now a de facto member alongside guests including former Japan keyboardist Richard Barbieri and John Thirkell, the trumpeter who guests on two of Secrets & Lies’ eleven tracks. Throughout the many years that led to his ultimate invitation to join King Crimson in September 2013, Jakszyk remained a somewhat ubiquitous musical presence, even as greater public attention remained elusive. He contributed to projects by artists including Barbieri, Gavin Harrison, Peter Blegvad, Pip Pyle, former Japan bassist Mick Karn, and Dave Stewart’s post-1980 “pop music for adults” duo with singer Barbara Gaskin. By 2002, it’s no hyperbole to suggest that Jakszyk may not have been a household name, but with musicians in the progressive/art rock sphere and beyond? An increasingly visible presence. Most fortuitously, Jakszyk would become guitarist and lead vocalist for 21st Century Schizoid Band from 2002-2004 (a play on the title of In the Court of the Crimson King’s searing jazz-meets-metal opener, “21st Century Schizoid Man”), a group the guitarist/vocalist was instrumental in bringing together. Barring Jakszyk, 21SCB was comprised of musicians who had played with early incarnations of King Crimson between 1969 and 1972. 21SCB was a repertory group whose set lists were largely drawn from Crimson compositions released between 1969 and 1974, alongside songs drawn from from McDonald and Giles (Island, 1971) and occasional new music. As the only founding member to still be working in the various lineups that followed King Crimson’s highly successful debut, guitarist and occasional keyboardist Robert Fripp was not interested in participating with 21st Century Schizoid Band; after all, the Crimson lineup responsible for The ConstruKction of Light (Panegyric, 2000) and then-forthcoming The Power to Believe (Panegyric, 2003) was still active. That said, Fripp did give 21CSB his blessing to perform music that, for the most part, he’d had a major role in writing. In 21CSB’s roughly three-year lifespan, Jakszyk was faced with the daunting task of simultaneously singing and replicating much of Fripp’s innovative and oftentimes complicated guitar work. Fripp was, indeed, impressed with Jakszyk’s ability to manage the musical equivalent of simultaneously rubbing his stomach and patting his head. It’s a skill clearly heard on Pictures of a City: Live in New York (Iceni, 2006), the fourth and final live recording released by 21CSB and recorded near the end of April, 2004, just a few days before the band ceased to exist. Fast forward a decade, and Jakszyk was on the road with a revised, revived and revitalized King Crimson, its short 2014 North American tour documented at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, and on the relatively brief Live at the Orpheum (Panegyric, 2015). Alongside Fripp and Jakszyk, this revised Crimson has collected Crimson/Crimson-related alum from across its various periods to play music spanning its entire career, along with judiciously introduced new material and the occasional improv. Bassist/stick player/background vocalist Tony Levin was first heard on the band’s 1981 game-changer, Discipline (Panegyric), while woodwind/reed multi-instrumentalist Mel Collins made his debut appearance on Crimson’s sophomore effort, In the Wake of Poseidon (Panegyric, 1970). However, with Fripp’s vision for a new Crimson placing three drummers in the front line, Jakszyk, Levin and Collins joined the guitarist/keyboardist in the band’s back line, a most unusual move that gave the group something of an orchestral, electro-acoustic percussion section up front and, in one case, a keyboardist who could cover many of its piano and mellotron parts. Of the new lineup’s three drummers, Pat Mastelotto was the one with the longest history in Crimson. This particularly talented textural, electro-acoustic percussionist first joined Crimson’s Double Trio incarnation in 1994, responsible for, amongst other releases, its sole full-length studio outing, THRAK (Panegyric, 1995). Mastelotto remained with the group for all of its subsequent incarnations. While his instructional book, Rhythmic Illusions (Alfred, 1996), was instrumental in determining how drummer Bill Bruford (with Crimson from 1972-1999) would engage with Mastelotto in Crimson’s Double Trio, the staggeringly virtuosic Gavin Harrison (at the time, wrapping up his tenure with Porcupine Tree) only debuted briefly with King Crimson in 2008. Playing alongside Mastelotto, Fripp, guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew and the returning Levin on a short, four-city/eleven-date American tour, Harrison’s work with Crimson was first documented on the download-only soundboard release, Park West, Chicago, Illinois August 7, 2008 (DGM Live, 2008), subsequently fleshed out with the two-CD New York, August 14-17, 2008, included in the 24-disc Heaven & Earth: Live and In the Studio 1997-2008 (Panegyric, 2019) box set. The reinvigorated Crimson’s final member, drummer/keyboardist Bill Rieflin, never appeared with Crimson prior to 2014 but brought his expertise to related projects like Slow Motion Project (with, amongst others, Fripp and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck), The Humans (featuring bassist Chris Wong alongside Fripp and the guitarist’s wife, established progressive pop singer Toyah Wilcox), and the 1999 collaborative album with Fripp and then-Crimson bassist/Warr guitarist Trey Gunn, The Repercussions of Angelic Behaviour (First World Music, 1999). Rieflin brought a sparer approach to the kit, along with keyboard skills that ranged from at-times faithful parts from the legacy Crimson material to some outrageously irreverent textural contributions. There have been minor shifts in personnel with King Crimson’s current incarnation, largely due to Rieflin and his wife’s ongoing health problems that would tragically lead to her passing in August 2019, age 59, with the drummer following her into the ether seven months later, at the same too-young age. Still, despite the current novel coronavirus pandemic shutting down its planned 2020 tour, the current Crimson, with drummer/keyboardist Jeremy Stacey onboard since 2016 (and Rieflin, when he was periodically able to return to the band, becoming King Crimson’s first-ever full-time keyboardist), remains committed to resuming live performances in 2021. Back to 2004, 21CSB may have dissolved but a connection between Jakszyk and Fripp had been established. It was an association that gradually grew into a friendship, leading to the pair engaging in periodic improvised duets that were recorded, despite their casual nature. These sessions combined Fripp’s ever-evolving Soundscapes and his acute blend of the oblique and the lyrical, with Jakszyk’s impressive talent as a guitarist possessed of a sophisticated melodic sensibility and no shortage of technical acumen. The improvisations were so successful that Jakszyk ultimately took the recordings home, shaping them into a series of songs that led to A Scarcity of Miracles (Panegyric, 2011). With Mel Collins invited to layer definitive soprano saxophone lines over the material, the project was ultimately credited to Jakszyk, Collins & Fripp…





Tracklist:
01. Before I Met You
02. The Trouble with Angels
03. Fools Mandate
04. The Rotters Club Is Closing Down
05. Uncertain Times
06. It Would All Make Sense
07. Secrets, Lies & Stolen Memories
08. Under Lock & Key
09. The Borders We Traded
10. Trading Borders
11. Separation


Media Report:
Genre: prog-rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits