Songs of Ascent VI and the Half-Blood Prince

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very quiet on the U2 front these days.. very quiet.. no news on album, remasters, or the band in general, only a couple blurbs on the tour.

things are usually only this quiet when there's an announcement pending.

I don't think there's been any decision regarding a June release yet. I think the fact that there's been no news is good news..
 
Registered Dude said:
very quiet on the U2 front these days.. very quiet.. no news on album, remasters, or the band in general, only a couple blurbs on the tour.

things are usually only this quiet when there's an announcement pending.

I don't think there's been any decision regarding a June release yet. I think the fact that there's been no news is good news..
Click to expand...

you know, i was just thinking about that this morning too. things are not just quiet, but extremely quiet. in the last month, we've gotten no news, no band members saying anything...nothing, other than the reposting of the Irish Independent article from December.

i honestly have no clue what to think of this. it could be this quiet simply because there's no album in the works and the band is just simply vacationing before the tour resumes......or they could be hard at work completing the album.
 
of course, Daniel Lanois is working with Black Dub, Lillywhite just entered the studio with Evanescence, meaning that U2 are now only working with Eno.. or Rubin... or... someone new? if they are indeed working
 
mikal said:
you know, i was just thinking about that this morning too. things are not just quiet, but extremely quiet. in the last month, we've gotten no news, no band members saying anything...nothing, other than the reposting of the Irish Independent article from December.

i honestly have no clue what to think of this. it could be this quiet simply because there's no album in the works and the band is just simply vacationing before the tour resumes......or they could be hard at work completing the album.
Click to expand...

brothers in optimism...
 
Registered Dude said:
of course, Daniel Lanois is working with Black Dub, Lillywhite just entered the studio with Evanescence, meaning that U2 are now only working with Eno.. or Rubin... or... someone new? if they are indeed working
Click to expand...

Lanois is pretty much done working with Black Dub actually, according to himself in a recent radio interview. The Black Dub songs are all done and they will even send out an additional freebie sometime this week. Then they will release their record in May on Neil Young's Vapor Records. Lanois also said that he will work with Neil Young on his upcoming record. Black Dub, Robert Plant/Alison Krauss and now Neil Young. I suppose he won't work that much with our guys at present, save for the occasional pop-in maybe. :sigh:

Lillywhite is indeed going to work with Evanescence for the time being, so I wouldn't count on him.

I don't know about Eno's plans at the moment but it would be interesting to see him work with U2 and then call in Edge for some additional production again. I read somewhere that Lillywhite and Eno were working together (on the U2 album?) during some BBC interview recently, I think?

I don't know how experienced Edge is as a producer but perhaps they're confident enough to fix the little things themselves this time around if they do in fact have sufficient amount of more or less complete songs left over from the No Line On The Horizon sessions and the more recent recordings in France/New York. :hmm:
 
Registered Dude said:
very quiet on the U2 front these days.. very quiet.. no news on album, remasters, or the band in general, only a couple blurbs on the tour.

things are usually only this quiet when there's an announcement pending.

I don't think there's been any decision regarding a June release yet. I think the fact that there's been no news is good news..
Click to expand...
I hope you're right. :up:
 
The_Edge89 said:
I don't know how experienced Edge is as a producer but perhaps they're confident enough to fix the little things themselves this time around if they do in fact have sufficient amount of more or less complete songs left over from the No Line On The Horizon sessions and the more recent recordings in France/New York. :hmm:
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well, there's Zooropa, to Edge's credit.

though he's probably got less time on his hands these days
 
It could be that U2 really don't need much help from producers because the songs are already done, such as NLOTH leftovers. Additionally, they might be in the process of writing some new stuff at the last minute or making final decisions about track order, album art, etc. if they're done writing. I hope this is the case and the quietness isn't because they're putting SOA on hold.
 
Registered Dude said:
well, there's Zooropa, to Edge's credit.

though he's probably got less time on his hands these days
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Yeah, and Stranded as well, but what I meant was that we don't know for sure how much Edge contributed to those projects as a producer. Then again, I seem to remember a quote from McGuinness who said Zooropa was realized thanks to Edge's sheer willpower or something to that effect. How he took time inbetween tours to go to Dublin and L.A. to tinker with it.
 
Registered Dude said:
of course, Daniel Lanois is working with Black Dub, Lillywhite just entered the studio with Evanescence, meaning that U2 are now only working with Eno.. or Rubin... or... someone new? if they are indeed working
Click to expand...

This makes sense though and is potentially good news, Songs of Ascent, if recorded in the way Bono originally spoke about was only ever going to be an Eno job, possibly with Edge co-producing like with Zooropa, this, coupled with the deafening silence is only increasing my optimism.
 
Edge on his involvement with Zooropa:

3:30
We already had some material that we had been developing before he (Brian Eno) arrived.
The second time he came over we got him to devote more of his energy towards taking the songs that were already nearly ready, nearly finished, and helping us to finish them out so that they were ready to mix.
...

4:20
I guess I ended up taking on more stuff just because of the way the project worked out.
Flood arrived after we had already started and left a little before the end and Brian was in for a couple of 2-3 week periods so it was all down to me.
It was a kind of babysitting job almost.

YouTube - Interview Adam Clayton (in a skirt!) and The Edge (1/3)
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Maybe it is wishful thinking but it does kind of sound like the situation is the same right now. Then again, U2 always come up with lots of material that doesn't make the intended album before starting the next recording session - Stir My Soul, Mercy, Every Breaking Wave etc.
 
mama cass said:
"Stir My Soul"?? where's this from??
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It's from the All That You Can't Leave Behind sessions. It was the ultimate reincarnation of a song called Jubilee and for a while it was considered to be included on the album (as the opening track!) before being left off - like Every Breaking Wave and Mercy for the last two albums.

The song is called, for this moment, anyhow, "Stir My Soul." As it exists at around a quarter past six on a Friday evening in May, it is delicate and beautiful, driven by a hypnotic piano motif, over which Bono murmurs a mixture of words and melody before launching into a chorus largely consisting of the phrase "stir my soul" repeated over and over.
U2 have an idea that "Stir My Soul" will be the song the band needs to open its new album, in the works for two years and scheduled for release this fall. "Some sort of opening gambit," Bono explains. "Sometimes you dream one up, and sometimes you find one on the floor."
A year ago, Bono says, this song was called "Jubilee," and he had it all worked out. It leaped off from the Old Testament concept of a jubilee year.
U2 marked it as a song they should get back to, but when they replayed it a few days ago, all that jubilee thinking was cast aside. Bono wrote an entirely new lyric. He sings me the opening lines -- "Speak to me of the supernatural things/I will listen if you can tell me why the songbird sings" -- and shows me a printout of the rest from his computer, almost as if he wants to prove that the new U2 album is not being delayed simply because the singer has failed to complete his homework. But even that version is history now. "Beautiful tune, beautiful melody," he says, "but it wasn't what we wanted it to be. We were looking for more of an invocation."

Full story: U2Station.com | U2 News | U2 Stirring Their Souls in the Studio
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Actually, there are a couple of things in the description of the song that makes me think it could've become No Line On The Horizon:
1. Fuzz guitar? - "The Edge tries to add some guitar. "I like that," encourages Bono. "It's dizzier."
2. I'm a traffic cop? - Bono worries about a part of the song at the end of the chorus where it stops and regathers itself. "It's a little professional when it stops," he says to Lanois. "We might have to mess it up a bit."
3. "I watch her changing every day for me. Oh yeah, oh whoa oh whoa"? - Bono picks up the microphone and sings some heavenly "oh-whoa-oh-whoa's" onto the track.
 
My guess is that they are starting to think that neither SOA nor the Rick Rubin songs should be the starting point for their next album. I can't wait to hear those songs, really I can't because I am a huge U2 fan and I'm certain that I will find these songs amazing but I also think that neither of these directions is the right one to take now. We all know about the trilogy theory and we all know that NLOTH is the third album of the 2000's one. NLOTH was objectively an amazing album but strangely it wasn't very well received. For me that's a strong hint that the formula they used for their three latest albums is losing its impact and that it's the time for them to see things differently one more time, to "reinvent" themselves as they did after War, R&H and Pop. They need to find a totally new direction or they will stop being relevant and by that I mean being relevant in terms of creativity and/or commercial success and in the long term this couldn't be a good thing for the future of the band. And SOA or the Rick Rubin sessions stuff just don't sound different enough from what they have made in the last decade to represent that new direction.

This is just a possibility about how they could consider their next move right now and honestly I'm not sure what choice I would like them to make. At least if SOA has to be released I think that they have to release it quickly. I don't think there is a point at all to rework to death a sister album to NLOTH.
 
The_Edge89 said:
Actually, there are a couple of things in the description of the song that makes me think it could've become No Line On The Horizon:
1. Fuzz guitar? - "The Edge tries to add some guitar. "I like that," encourages Bono. "It's dizzier."
2. I'm a traffic cop? - Bono worries about a part of the song at the end of the chorus where it stops and regathers itself. "It's a little professional when it stops," he says to Lanois. "We might have to mess it up a bit."
3. "I watch her changing every day for me. Oh yeah, oh whoa oh whoa"? - Bono picks up the microphone and sings some heavenly "oh-whoa-oh-whoa's" onto the track.
Click to expand...

:hmm: Could the origins of "No Line" be that old? It really sounds like that's what they're talking about here. Interesting...
 
so.....yeah. if there's any hope for June, we would need to hear some kind of breaking news very soon. i'd say if we're still sitting here with no news 3 weeks from now, then consider it confirmation that nothing is being released before the tour.
 
Edge also tweeted an image recently of some monument in NY state.

Lillywhite has been tweeting from NY recently as well.
 
I've basically given up on hope for SOA. I worry for how the band will handle the rest of the tour.
 
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