Recently in the Album News Category

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."

The band on "Songs of Ascent," Spider-Man music and U2 haters

Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone

On Future Plans

The Edge: We're sort of spoiled for choice right now, because there's a bunch of amazing pieces that we didn't finish from the work we did in Fez, and there's the songs we started with Rick Rubin, some of which are amazing songs that I'd love to get back to at some point. Bono and I also have this Spider-Man [musical] project, which we're very happy about. So there are a lot of things on the stove, and they're all very exciting.

Now that this tour is kind of up and running, I'm really looking forward to getting into those projects, doing some listening back, seeing where they're all at, seeing which one is probably set to go first. The one thing is we'd love to follow this album up sooner rather than later -- I don't think we'll have over three years or whatever it was between the last two records. It's hard to say [about a U2 Spider-Man album]. There will be a Spider-Man album, but whether it's us or the cast, that's the sort of thing we're not sure about. There are some amazing tunes.

Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of their 1984 classic The Unforgettable Fire, U2 will reissue their fourth album with remastered sound on October 27th, the band announced on their official website. As with last year's reissues of the band's first three albums Boy, October and War, the Unforgettable Fire reissue will be available in a variety of formats: CD, 12" vinyl, a deluxe edition and a limited edition box set.

The deluxe edition will feature both the remastered album culled from the original audio tapes and a bonus CD stocked with B-sides and other unreleased material. The full contents of the bonus audio CD haven't yet been revealed, but in addition to the B-sides of the era, the disc will feature two previously unreleased tracks from the 1984 Slane Castle sessions: "Yoshino Blossom" and "Disappearing Act," which the band recently completed.

by Michael D. Ayers, Billboard

While U2's "360 Tour" just got underway in Chicago this past weekend, fans are in store for another treat this fall as the 25th anniversary of the band's classic 1984 album, "The Unforgettable Fire" will be celebrated with a host of reissue configurations. Due October 27 from Island/Universal, four options will be available that include B-sides, rarities, alternate versions, and previously unreleased songs including "Disappearing Act" (a.k.a. "White City"), a song that was originally started in 1983 with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Only recently the band put the finishing touches on "Disappearing Act" in France, according to an interview with BBC Radio 1.