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Elbow's first US tour has been postponed to early next year according to Billboard. It was pushed back due to "a personal emergency" and this was supposed to be their first headlining tour of the US. In the past they've supported Goldfrapp, Doves, Pete Yorn and co-headlined a tour with South.

David Byrne has turned his hand to a different cup of tea again, this time he's taken up Industrial Design and has created 2 handled, alien-faced espresso cups. Check it out on One Media.

(Emperor Norton - US Release 19 Sept. 02)

I'm drawn to music that sounds like I could do it myself, with the help of a techno-geek friend and some software. There is something very hands on, totally accomplishable within the new Ladytron album, 'Light & Magic'. Yet the talent and skill needed to create such an overall diverse and consistently refreshing album are definitely not easily recreated by just anyone with a mac. There's more to this album than Ladytron boasted with their 2000 release '604.' The sounds are similar, yet the band has taken it to a higher plane.

Sigur Ros have announced the details of their new album, '( )'. Yes, that's just a pair of parentheses. The record has 8 untitled tracks and runs 70 minutes long. The lyrics are in the Sigur Ros invented language, hopelandic, so they're pretty much all instrumentals. As you can see they're taking a very minimalistic approach and even the album credits will only be found on their website. The new album is is scheduled to be released on October 28th.

Allstar's reporting that Coldplay turned down a 85 million dollars in advertising revenue. But lead singer, Chris Martin, had this to add, "I'm sure we'll do something in the future where we will fuck up. I'm sure one day we'll be desperate for money or exposure and we'll go crawling back to the Gap and say, 'Hey, are you sure you don't want a song?' But at the moment we can say 'Fuck 'em!'"

Coldplay's new album, 'A Rush of Blood to the Head' is out on August 26th and you can listen to the full album right now.

The Shortlist of Music Project has announced the 75 albums that make up the Long List. These will then be voted on to create the final top 10 which will obviously be the Short List. There are several great artists are nominated and a bunch of cool "Listmakers" like Blur's Damon Alborn, Beck, Albert n Nick from the Strokes, Paul Oakenfold and Sonic Youth's Kim Gorden. Sigur Ros won the prize last year.

NME has announced plans today for a new War Child charity record to follow in the footsteps of the acclaimed "Help" record of several years ago. Bands who have agreed to participate are to go into studio between now and the first week of September to lay down a cover of their choice, provided it was a former UK #1 song. The disc will be released in October to coincide with the 50th birthday of NME and the anniversary of the first UK pop music chart. Bands already confirmed to appear include: OASIS, MANIC STREET PREACHERS, STEREOPHONICS, BADLY DRAWN BOY, STARSAILOR, FEEDER, JIMMY EAT WORLD, BASEMENT JAXX, and MS. DYNAMITE, with more to be announced as the project nears completion.

OASIS have confirmed "Little By Little" as their next single... but the important news is that their stellar live cover of The Who's "My Generation" is to finally see the light of day as one of the new b-sides. Of course, the last time that Oasis put out a "live" cover version on a single, we found out years later that it wasn't a live treatment at all - their version of "I Am the Walrus", which claimed to be recorded live, was in fact a studio one-take that the band later added crowd noise to in order to emulate a live performance... and if memory serves, I believe they admitted that the crowd noise in question was ripped from The Who's "Live at Leeds." What goes around comes around...

Weren't you sick of Radiohead? I swear, during those last two albums it got to the point where I didn't want to hear anything about that band. But it's been a while and talking about Radiohead seems okay again. Nick passed on a link to listen to some new Radiohead materal that they recently played in Portugal. He got the info from an excellent Radiohead site, Green Plastic.

Nick sent in the bit of info that the Flaming Lips will be Beck's supporting band on his upcoming tour. Beck will be touring in support of his acoustic album, "Sea Change". The Flaming Lips will also be opening the show with their own material before Beck joins them onstage. You can currently see the Flaming Lips on the Ultimate Sunshine tour. I just saw them last week and it was fantastic! The headliner, Cake, took the second to last spot to give the Lips, "more darkness for their audio/visual show". Finally, if you haven't heard their performance on KCRW, head on over there with your Realplayer and check it out. I don't want to give anything away but their first song is a cover of Radiohead's "Knives Out"