New R.E.M. LP In October, Tour In January

Co-producing the album with Michael Stipe (pictured), Peter Buck and Mike Mills is Pat McCarthy, who's worked with U2, the Counting Crows, and the Wallflowers.

World tour to follow release of first post-Bill Berry album.

Addicted To Noise Senior Writer Gil Kaufman reports : If current plans hold, R.E.M.'s upcoming, still-untitled album will be released this October and will be followed by a world tour, according to band manager Bertis Downs.

The band is discussing launching its first world tour in more than three years in January. "We're talking about that right now," Downs said Wednesday. "They will certainly tour the U.S. and Europe."

The group -- now composed of singer Michael Stipe, bassist/keyboardist Mike Mills and guitarist Peter Buck -- is currently in a San Francisco recording studio working on its 11th album, the follow-up to 1996's New Adventures In Hi-Fi and the first without original drummer Bill Berry behind the drum kit. Berry announced that he was leaving R.E.M. on amiable terms last fall, claiming that he had had enough of the rock scene and needed to take a break.

Augmented for these sessions by Seattle's Screaming Trees percussionist Barrett Martin, R.E.M. entered the Northern California studio on Feb. 2 with more than an album's worth of songs. Also joining R.E.M. this time out is co-producer Pat McCarthy, 30, who's worked with U2, the Counting Crows, the Wallflowers and Luna and who was an engineer on Madonna's just-released Ray of Light album. High Llamas producer Charlie Francis is engineering the album.

Since recording began, a number of additional songs have been written by the remaining trio, Downs confirmed, adding to the approximately 40 tunes that Stipe, Buck and Mills had already prepared for the album. "I don't know exactly how many songs they started with, or how many they've written in San Francisco," Downs said. "But it's a lot."

News of the new material and of the plans for another album was music to Marc Aarts' ears. As webmaster of the So Fast, So Numb unofficial R.E.M. site, Aarts said he's just happy that there will be another R.E.M. album. "After Bill's departure, I was really afraid that the band would split up," said the 21-year-old from Eindhoven, Netherlands.

The new album will be the group's first in more than 10 years to be co-produced by someone other than Scott Litt, who was behind the boards for some of R.E.M.'s biggest-selling releases: Document, Green, Out of Time, Automatic For the People, Monster and New Adventures In Hi-Fi.

Demos for the album were first recorded during pre-production sessions that took place last year in Hawaii, Seattle and Athens, Ga., Downs said. It was during those sessions in Hawaii, Berry told Addicted To Noise last year, that he realized that he'd lost some of his passion for being in a rock band. "I would say it first started impacting me when we started work on this record in Hawaii earlier this year," Berry said last October. "I just didn't have that same drive to go in and work like I used to ... I wasn't enthused about it."

At the time of Berry's announcement, singer Stipe seemed unsure in what fashion R.E.M. would continue following the departure of their time-keeper and good friend. "Your guess is as good as ours," Stipe said at the time. "Peter, Mike and I have a lot of songs we're really excited about, and we don't want to quit making music. As far as we're concerned, as far as Bill is concerned, R.E.M. is still R.E.M. We're just three members now." [Thurs., March 5, 1998, 7:30 p.m. PST]



Copyright © 1997 Addicted To Noise. All rights reserved.
Please do not reprint entire Addicted To Noise news stories without written permission from Addicted To Noise. If you excerpt, rewrite, or in some way make use of portions of our news, attribute to: Addicted To Noise, the on-line rock & roll magazine - http://www.addict.com/