I'd be delighted if one of those 20 tracks chosen for the album would be Bucket for a crown. :)

Awesome news!!

i`m gwhyneth paltrow

 

Welcome to the best Coldplay forum on the web. Hope you stay and have fun!:)

 

I'm not sure how you can pull off handclaps in a song about cemeteries either, Gabriel, but they're being experemental, so it could work...and I completely agree with you about the Hip Hop beat,lol.

 

nothing

 

coldplay lovers

 

:)

Well the latest news about cemeteries of london, yes! and lost! will get me through the week. I expect the term "hand-clap laden" will turn out to be somewhat of an exaggeration. I second -Gabriel, in that I expect I'll also be glad to see the hip-hop beat ditched.

 

Also, I think the hypnosis news might put an end to the "is chris martin on pot?" discussion. It seems they've found a legal alternative ;)

Franz Ferdinand's 3rd is one im really intrested in, being that they're the first band to perfect 3 minute pop songs since The Beatles and create simple effective dance and sing a long to pop.

 

True... except for other bands like early R.E.M., The Smiths, The Pixies, Nirvana, and many others. Franz are great, but Radio Free Europe, This Charming Man, Where Is My Mind?, Smells Like Teen Spirit can all be considered damn near perfect, all around 3 minutes, and all memorable, catchy songs.

I'm really relief that "big hip-hop beat" has been ditched. Well, I expected the new album been released around March but now, May? or even June? I think it's too much, I'm sure almost all here can't wait more but well, I hope all this worth, after all is Coldplay the band I'm talking about :)

Hmm...hand claps...cant wait!!:D

nice cover, I can't wait for this album!

Scans have arrived! Enjoy ;)

 

In the article Brian Eno has altered Coldplay's approach to making music, encouraging them to consider rhythm, experiment with time signatures and, during one eureka moment, transpose Glass Of Water's piano riff onto three different guitars. "It sounded very African, which we liked," says Guy Berryman.

 

Brian Eno beavers away on Famous Old Painters, employing a gizmo called a Midi Piano Bar to translate Chris Martin's signature piano riff onto a variety of other instruments. "We don't want piano all the way through," Eno says, flagging up another significant change in the sound of the as-yet-untitled album.

 

He also acknowledges that, "The band wanted to move away from a way of working that had built up on the previous three albums." So while X&Y germinated in the studio, this one draws on their live shows. "We've tried," says Eno, "to base this one around live performance."

 

 

 

 

Wow! Thanks for posting, Ian! ;)

 

Honestly I don´t know if I´m more excited or afraid!! OMG I´m so damn curious!!

its totally thrown anything that I thought about the album! African Influence???????

thanks a lot Ian :)

Thank you! :nice:

thanks Ian for sharing and as i always say sharing is caring!

thanks for posting that - great article

Wow thanks! YEh..excited or scared, I'm both.

 

Hmm, they reckon it'll be released "May/June"

 

o please dont be true.

Wow. anticipation has almost reached the breaking point. The most encouraging news I see is that there are or were signature piano riffs in famous old painters and glass of water. I think what eno is getting at is avoiding a sense of monotonous repetition. Like clocks(my favorite song) for example, had clocks been in the mixing for this next album eno might have proposed the riff be imitated by guitar and roles reversed...

 

It's also interesting to think of a martin-esque piano riff being transposed for three guitars (I hope it's referring to jonny's lead, chris's rythm and guy's bass).

So their new studio is called The Bakery? Cool.

Sounds interesting... Thank God for Brian Eno. :nice:

Q Magazine February 2008 - Coldplay 2008 Preview (Transcript)

 

As Coldplay enter the final lap of recording their fourth album, they’re mindful of previous pre-release proclamations of greatness - such, “Our next album is going to be the greatest piece of music ever made.” uttered by Chris Martin towards the end of the campaign for 2005’s 12 million-selling X&Y. Flopping onto a sofa in the band’s own North London studio, The Bakery, a twitchy Martin is now hell-bent on, “avoiding hyperbole. We’ll keep it factual.”

 

The band have been working on X&Y’s successor since the summer of 2006. A few months into the process veteran producer Brian Eno and his right-hand man. Markus Dravs, came on board as producers. Eno had known Coldplay for a while [he contributed “bubbling synthesizer” to X&Y’s Low], and has a track record of pushing big bands beyond their comfort zones and helping them locate a new direction, most famously with U2’s The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby.

 

“He’s encouraged us to just try things,” says bassist Guy Berryman, who acknowledges they were drawn to Eno’s love of experimentation. “It’s very easy to no try an idea because you think everyone's gonna think it’s a rubbish one. We thought, We’re using Brian not because we’re trying to copy U2 in any way, but because he’s a really nice guy who’s very inspiring to be around. It’s worked out really well.”

 

A plan to road-test new material during a short tour of South America early last year came to nothing. As did some of the tracks they’d been working on up until that point, which were “shunted” aside when they returned to the studio. Berryman says the band have hit a similar wall on “every album”. Meanwhile, being forced to write a fresh batch of tunes helped Martin overcome a crisis of confidence.”The difficult thing about where we were at either months ago,”

he says, “is that we were in the position where we were extremely big. But we didn’t actually think we were very good.”

 

Another thing that helped them out of the rut was hypnosis, with the band’s new-found adventurousness extending to writing music while in an altered state. Some might conclude they’ve misplaced their marbles, but Martin seems unconcerned.”Everything over this past few months has been about taking off any shackles,” he says, “We feel like we have so much to prove and so many ideas that we’d like to try - sometimes you need a hypnotist to give you the bravery to do it. “For the record, he insists the experience, “was fun and interesting, and we wrote some nice things.”

 

Martin talks about the recording process as liberating, as being about, “locking ourselves away and stopping worrying about what anyone might say. “It’s been about just trying anything, without worrying. Is this Coldplay?”. Eno also cracked the whip in more mundane ways, structuring the working day, so they followed more regular, rather than rock-star hours. There was to be no more rolling in at noon. “He said, You work far too long, but not hard enough,” admits drummer Will Champion.

 

Inevitably, the producer also altered their approach to making music, encouraging them to consider rhythm, experiment with time signatures and during one eureka moment, transpose Glass Of Water’s piano riff into three different guitars. “It sounded very African, which we liked,” says Berryman.

 

While Q’s in the studio, Eno beavers away on Famous Old Painters, employing a gizmo called a Midi Piano Bar to translate Martin’s signature piano riff onto a variety of other instruments. “We don’t want piano all the way through,” Eno says, flagging up another significant change in the sound of the as-yet-untitled album. He also acknowledges that, “The band wanted to move away from a way of working that had built up on the previous three albums,” So while X&Y germinated in the studio, this one draws on their live shows. “We’ve tried, says Eno, “to base this one more around performance.”

 

They’ve also tried to keep things brief, with the album designed to come in at nine songs and just over 42 minutes. “We’ve been strict about cutting things quite tightly,” maintains Eno. “There’s not a lot of fat - everything sounds like a full composed song.”

 

The final nine songs will be chosen from a shortlist of 20, with mixing having been completed before Christmas. Favourites include the atmospheric, handclap-laden, possible first single Cemeteries Of London, the string assisted Yes and Lost!, which according to Champion, was “drastically” reinvented by ditching its “big hip-hop beat”.

 

“Big hip-hop beats” will come as no surprise to Chris Martin-watchers. The last time the singer was onstage in this country was September 2006, when he guested during Jay-Z’s show at London’s Royal Albert Hall, playing piano on Heart Of The City [Ain’t No Love]. Since then Martin has appeared on both Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come, producing and singing on the track Beach Chair, and Kanye West’s Graduation [he sings on Homecoming].

 

Will this album see any traces of his passion for the world of rap? “Brian and Marcus have opened us up to all kinds of things,” is Martin’s half-honest, half-flippant response. “They’ve helped us realise it’s OK to be influenced by people who aren’t Radiohead. They’ve introduced us to Tinariwen [from Mali, heavily rhythmic], Rammstein [intense German metal] - everything”.

 

After the progressively more stadium rock sound of their first three albums, the fourth is being billed as Coldplay 2.0. “The start of something fresh,” says Champion. “It was an incredible eight

years, but we got to the point of saturation.”

 

Champion also says many of the tracks share a theme: “Trying to remember what’s important in your life, rather than being carried away by the trappings of other things.”

 

Chris Martin suggests Coldplay’s options are now wide open.”That’s what’s nice about being in a band these days: although you’re never gonna be as good as The Beatles, at least you can steal from thousands of different places. It’s a plagiarist’s dream. You can learn something from anyone who’s hungry. So I will steal off anyone that sounds like they’re desperate to do something great. Whether that’s a 15 year-old in my brother’s band or whatever. Could be anybody.

 

INFO

 

Title: TBC

Recorded: The Bakery, North London; Spain

Key Tracks: Cemeteries Of London, Lost! Famous Old Painters

Released: May/June 2008

Strange But True: Group backing vocals were recorded in two churches and a monastery in Barcelona. All “soaked in reverb”, apparently.

 

THE SCIENTIST

 

Maverick producer Brian Eno’s on board. What will Coldplay do?

 

Go African: Eno first explored “the interface between primitive and futuristic”

on Talking Heads’ Fear Of Music, which opened with the African rhythms of I Zimbra, a mind-bending collaboration with frontman David Byrne.

Likelihood: A sure bet. The band have namechecked Tinariwen and talked about new track Glass Of Water sounding “very African”.

ODDS: 2/1

 

Go Avant-Garde: Eno suggested David Byrne use the nonsense poetry of Dadaist writer Hugo Ball as lyrics for I Zimbra, while avant-garde composer Steve Reich inspired his early studio “treatments” with Roxy Music. As Bono put it later “A lot of English rock ‘n’ roll bands went to art school. We went to Brian”.

Likelihood: High experimentation is what Eno does best, after all

ODDS: 5/1

 

Go German: A fellow fan of early 70s Krautrock, David Bowie invited Eno to Berlin’s Hansa studios to work on “Heroes” and The Lodger. When U2 booked the same studio in 1990 for Achtung Baby, he flew in every two weeks to offer “comments and suggestions”

Likelihood: Unlikely, though Eno has introduced them to Teutonic metal loons

Rammstein.

ODDS: 15/1

 

Go Ambient: The idea for his ambient albums came after Eno was knocked down by a taxi. Recovering in bed, he noticed background noises mixing with the songs playing on his stereo and had the notion of using music “like you use a piece of furniture or… lighting”

Likelihood: Low. Stadium rock doesn’t really sound the same without drums.

ODDS: 50/1

 

Go Freestyle: While recording with Bowie in Berlin, Eno made use of his Oblique Strategies, a set of cards bearing instructions such as “Be dirty” and “Change ambiguities to specifics”. “Brian was doing some strange experiments,” recalls producer Tony Visconti.

Likelihood: They brought in a hypnotist. It doesn’t get much more freestyle than that.

ODDS: 2/1

 

Let Eno take their press Shot: If his bug-eyed photograph of Coldplay for this issue of Q is anything to go by, Eno clearly fancies himself with a camera.

Likelihood: We’d probably suggest that David Bailey isn’t losing any sleep just yet.

ODDS 50/1

I think I might really like this album. Everything I read was good news to me.

 

Inevitably, [Eno] also altered their approach to making music, encouraging them to experiment with time signatures.

Heck yes.

thank you SO much for this! i'm still going to go out and buy it, but it's great to have stored on my hard drive!!!

 

ohhhh my god, i didnt think it was possible, but now i'm MORE anxious for the album! AHHHHH i think i may expolde!!

 

interesting side note: BOTH gwyneth and chris are in that jay-z pic!! so HAH to the press saying they never go out together anymore!

[/random noticing]

its totally thrown anything that I thought about the album! African Influence???????

 

Think 'Sleeping Sun'. I don't know if the songs will sound like that, but it definitely has African ifluences.:)

I'd love to see them trying out 5/4 or 7/4 time signatures. TOO COOL!

The Bakery...Chris and his cake obsession. :P

 

May/ June :(