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by Jimmy A, TripleM Sydney

In a rare interview on U2.com, Adam Clayton, bass player for the legendary Irish rockers, has spoken about plans for new songs.

Talking backstage in Turin, Italy during rehearsals, Clayton said the band have been doing loads of recording and they have quite a few tunes in the can now they'll be wheeling out during the tour.

"We've been doing some rehearsing but mainly we've been doing recording," he said. "That was the one thing Bono was able to do during his recovery. We're gonna toss a few out into the show and see how they go down."

"If we can get four songs into the show it gives us a chance to get to know the songs and [see] how they play in front of a crowd. Then you know if you're communicating, so you can tweak them."

Dave Hollister, of the R&B act behind No Diggity, says he's in the studio with Bono and the Edge, 'redoing some classics'

Sean Michaels, The Guardian

If their Spider-Man opera wasn't already WTF enough, U2 are now apparently collaborating with a member of Blackstreet. Dave Hollister, one quarter of the 90s R&B group, is allegedly helping the Irish band "re-do" two of their earlier songs.

Hollister revealed his involvement on Monday, posting to Twitter: "In the studio working with U2! Man I'm excited! Bono baby!!!!!!!!!!!!" Despite 12 exclamation points, Hollister and U2's fans do not - for some reason - move in the same online circles, and it took several days for the Bonosphere to begin gurgling its incomprehension.

According to Hollister's subsequent tweets, U2 are "redoing some classics", and he is helping them rework two tracks: All I Want Is You, from 1988's Rattle and Hum, and Grace, from 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. Neither much resemble No Diggity.

Achtung Baby
Front Sleeve | Purchase Album

1 U2, Achtung Baby, 1991

By Andy Battaglia; Scott Indrisek

With the middling reaction to last year's better-than-you'll-admit No Line on the Horizon, U2's chest-heaving big-box spectacle seems to be fatiguing more of pop's body politic than it's inspiring. Weirdly, this was exactly the case more than 20 years ago. After the critical and commercial sweep of Joshua Tree, the Irish conglomerate followed its bombastic muse with the ponderous 1988 docu-fiasco Rattle and Hum, which featured a Bono mot that would haunt many of us for years to come: "Okay, Edge, play the blues!" Flailing and directionless, the band retreated and reconsidered whether it was time to fold up their flag for good.

Instead, three years later they emerged with the album -- Achtung Baby, cheekily titled as a nod to German reunification -- that would energize their career and genetically engineer rock music into the hybridized mutant we know today. Initially recorded at Hansa Studios, a former SS ballroom near the reopened Berlin Wall (and later completed back home in Dublin), Achtung was an effort, stoked primarily by Bono and the Edge, to "deconstruct" the band and rewire it with jolts of beat-generated clutter and collage, nicked from industrial music, hip-hop, dance remixes, and the Madchester scene. That method almost collapsed the band -- bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., as well as coproducer Daniel Lanois, were left bewildered and cranky.

by Paul Cashmere, Undercover.com.au

Bono is saying the next U2 album will be called `Songs of Ascent'. He should know.

In an interview with Sean O'Hagan, Bono called 'Songs of Ascent' the sister album to 'No Line Of The Horizon', similar to how 'Zooropa' and 'Achtung Baby' were bookends.

Atu2.com says the album is expected to be produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois once again, with additional work by Steve Lillywhite.

Some of the songs are expected to be the leftover tracks from 'No Line On The Horizon', but some are older.

Songs expected to be used include 'North Star', an unused track from 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb'.

By Alex Hudson, Exclaim News

U2's last remix album, Melon: Remixes for Propaganda, was issued as a fan club exclusive in 1995. In January, the arena rock legends will be catching up on 15 years worth of remixes with another fan club-only release, Artificial Horizon.

According to U2's website, the disc will feature 13 songs, spanning from the Grand Jury Mix of 1997's "If God Will Send His Angels" to the Fish Out of Water Mix of this year's "Get On Your Boots." Other notable inclusions are Trent Reznor's remix of "Vertigo" and Hot Chip's take on "City of Blinding Lights."

In order to receive a copy of Artificial Horizon, you'll have to sign up for the U2.com Subscription, which costs $50 and includes pre-sale tickets and exclusive online content (videos, tour diaries, etc.).

By Christopher John Farley, Wall Street Journal Blogs (Speakeasy)

The boys from U2 have been marking the 25th anniversary of the release of "The Unforgettable Fire" with a series of re-issues of the album. There's a new remastered version, a vinyl version, a "Deluxe Edition" and even a "Super Deluxe Edition" for $54.99 on Amazon with two CDs, a DVD and a bunch of other extras.

Speakeasy is hoping that they come out with a "Super Mega Magnanimous Deluxe Edition 2.0″ with plane tickets to Dublin, a pub crawl with Bono and guitar lessons from The Edge. We can only hope.

"The Unforgettable Fire" is an album worth celebrating. U2 fans and critics can debate which album is the group's best-"War," "The Joshua Tree," maybe "Achtung Baby." But "The Unforgettable Fire" deserves to be part of the conversation.

by Ashley Iasimone, Spinner

With the recent 25th anniversary special edition reissue of 1984's 'The Unforgettable Fire,' U2 are stepping back to remember the making of the album. Bono and company employed producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois to help them experiment musically, and while it seemed like an unlikely combination then, their work on 'The Unforgettable Fire' led to a creative breakthrough for the band. It also helped to deliver the lead single 'Pride (In the Name of Love),' which became U2's biggest hit at the time.

In the exclusive interview clip after the jump, U2 discuss Eno, Lanois and Ireland's Slane Castle, where the album was initially recorded. Watch the video to find out how the experience "deconstructed U2" and what the band learned from it.

Interview by Mark Beech

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- "The Unforgettable Fire," which has been reissued, is the album that helped U2 conquer America.

Its anthemic template, crafted in 1984 with the assistance of co-producer Brian Eno, came three years before "The Joshua Tree," which took the Irish band "from heroes to superstars," according to Rolling Stone magazine, and sold 25 million copies.

Eno recalls in an interview that U2 broke every rule as it revised the trademark stadium rock of its first three LPs. Singer Bono's group reveled in experiments, took risks and improvised prayers and poetry. A new edition of the recording, released last week, showcases its strengths with 25 years of perspective by adding remasters, new tracks and a DVD.

"We started thinking of making sonic landscapes," Eno says. "We weren't trying to reproduce a band playing live, which is what recording was supposed to be about. 'A Sort of Homecoming' was a cinematic piece."

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - When U2 producer Danny Lanois and the band made "The Unforgettable Fire" in 1984, they recorded it at an Irish castle because they wanted a place with history, which Lanois said suited him just fine.

The album, which will be re-released on Tuesday in a remastered 25th anniversary edition, marked the first time U2 worked with Brian Eno and Lanois, two producers who would collaborate with the band several times more, and not always in a conventional studio setting.

Before arriving at Ireland's Slane Castle, an 18th Century structure overlooking the River Boyne, the Canadian-born Lanois had recorded in unusual places and he was ready to lend that expertise to U2 and its singer Bono.

"Bono was looking for a different kind of location, a building that had ghosts in the walls and some kind of a sense of history," Lanois told Reuters. "So that we weren't just in an empty modern warehouse, that we were actually feeling the presence of goings-on from the past," he said.

By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

U2's 360° Tour is selling out globally, but no lines formed for No Line on the Horizon, an album that has sold 1 million copies in seven months -- shy of the tally that 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb racked up in two weeks.

"We didn't have a hit," Bono says. Get On Your Boots "is going over better and better live, but that spongy funky sound didn't connect with rock radio. If your first single doesn't go off, it can knock the momentum. We believe in the songs and we want people to have them in their hearts and their iPods."

Missing 2008's fourth quarter hurt sales, which in an era of rampant piracy no longer reflect the music's reach.

"You don't know how far the music travels," says bassist Adam Clayton. "The new songs get a great reaction live. Nobody's yawning or groaning. Releasing it outside that last quarter made it more uphill. Other factors skew the numbers. The record business is collapsing, and radio and the media."