The band is set to headline the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona on May 27th and the Wireless Festival in London’s Hyde Park on July 3rd. Other festivals dates stateside are most likely to be announced in the near future.

In a letter to the band’s fans on their site, they ask: “Is this a hoax? Is this just what the doctor ordered? Is this the final straw? Is this too good to be true?”

Well, it’s happening.

For those who may or may not remember the influential 90’s band, here are some songs that might jog your memory:

Common People

This is Hardcore

I Spy

U.K. sweethearts Coldplay has announced that the band has joined ClientEarth, a non-profit organization that’s designed to help governments and green organizations to implement and put together environmental laws around the planet.

The band released a statement to Spinner, stating:

ClientEarth is at the forefront of changing the way the planet’s resources are governed. They have a positive and pragmatic approach to environmental issues, improving and enforcing environmental law. Coldplay are proud to support them.”

ClientEarth recently released the following statement on the band’s support:

To have one of the world’s most successful groups supporting our work is absolutely fantastic,” CEO James Thornton said. “Coldplay have long been strong advocates for environmental issues, and we are extremely pleased that they will continue to speak out for these most important of issues alongside us.”

Coldplay’s creative director and fifth member Phil Harvey is already one of ClientEarth’s trustees. They also join Brian Eno, the producer of their last album, as well as the MP and former editor of the Ecologist Zac Goldsmith. Brian Eno has said of the organization: “ClientEarth is essential to the green movement[...] to bring governments to account and carve out a new environmental agenda.”

Red-headed siren Neko Case has taken a break from the road to join National Geographic Live’s photography exhibit called “Music On… Photography,” which starts December 1st in Washington, DC. Case, originally a Fine Arts degree holder, will be showing her photos collected from recent tours and presenting the stories behind them.

Case notes that the photos she takes are to help her, “remember the places I was traveling through that I never really got to know.” Those interested can attend her discussion session on Dec 1st at 7:30 pm at the Grosvenor Auditorium for $20 – click here to view a gallery of her photos.

Those interested can also listen to radio interviews of those involved on National Geographic Weekend.

Other musicians involved in the “Music On… Photography” series include music photographer Danny Clinch (Nov 10th), pianist Ben Folds (Dec 3rd), and Police guitarist Andy Summers (Dec 4th). Get your tickets now!

Each of these four evenings feature a new perspective from each featured guest, moderated by Vanity Fair and GQ contributing photographer Mark Seliger and Juliet Blake, senior vice president at the National Geographic Channel.

The legendary hip-hop group Public Enemy has decided to look to their fans to fund their new record. Earlier this year it was announced that punk band Rise Against and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine would be collaborating with Public Enemy on their next album. At that time, they announced that would be raising funds to record the new album through Sellaband.com. The band aimed to raise around $75,000 through individual investors.

Front man Chuck D just announced that the fund raising has been completed:

We just received word that our fund raising campaign has completed. This is truly a great moment for us and we owe it all to our [fans] on SellaBand – our true ‘Believers.’ As the title of this entry suggests, it has been a long and winding road. We’ve had explosive starts, media attention, corporate troubles, media criticism, recalculations, and finally resurgence. When it’s all said and done, the bottom line is that we never lost faith in ourselves, our fams and the future of fan funding as a model.

The contributors were offered different options when deciding how much to offer the band, including a copy of the album, a download, and a revenue share along with more elaborate packages like a studio visit for $11,069. The album is still untitled and is expected to be out next year at some point.

What do you think about the fan-funded record? Does it seem kind of cheap on the performers part, or is it a new way to gauge demand?

The FAC, started in 2008 to build a network of U.K. musicians and artists, has over 200 members at this point. Some are well known, like Annie Lennox; many are new and unsigned.

Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason will carry out his role as the FAC ambassador to the music industry. Sandie Shaw will be charged with direct membership recruitment and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien will be responsible for the organization’s education initiatives.

Mason recently told Music-News,

We plan to focus on really making a difference to our members and artists in general. There are three key reasons people tell us they value being part of the FAC – to make sure they are fairly represented and heard, to network with other artists and to learn from one another ­– and the structure will allow us do this in a more streamlined way.”

The FAC has been in the news for several stories in the past year, including last year’s involvement with a music piracy rant that Lily Allen carried out online. The coalition not only backed her, but carried a lengthy statement on how to deal with piracy, which consisted of a three-strike sanction.

Check out the Featured Artists Coalition’s website for more information on the organization.

The live album is part of the band’s twentieth anniversary year, which covers the 2003-2010 tours. The songs were captured by John Burton, the band’s recording engineer, and have been mixed and mastered by longtime band engineer Brett Eliason. The album follows the band’s last live release, “Live On Two Legs” which came out in 1998 and featured performances recorded throughout that year.

Check out the video below for a little trailer for the new album:

Tracklisting for “Live On Ten Legs”:
1. “Arms Aloft”
2. “World Wide Suicide”
3. “Animal”
4. “Got Some”
5. “State Of Love And Trust”
6. “I Am Mine”
7. “Unthought Known”
8. “Rearview Mirror”
9. “The Fixer”
10. “Nothing As It Seems”
11. “In Hiding”
12. “Just Breathe”
13. “Jeremy”
14. “Public Image”
15. “Spin The Black Circle”
16. “Porch”
17. “Alive”
18. “Yellow Ledbetter

Sure, it might be viewed as a bit of a marketing ploy, but the band seemed to be in fine form and Garcia himself was energetic, introducing “Hash Pipe” and singing a duet with singer/songwriter Rivers Cuomo during “Perfect Situation.” Which would make this the best rock band/TV star collaboration since… well, what else IS there?

After announcing in early November that he had been working on a new Gorillaz album in the midst of their huge North American tour, Damon Albarn has revealed the new album will hopefully be out before Christmas. Albarn has also told NME that he recorded the new album on his iPad.

Previously a big technophobe, this comes as a bit of a surprise for Albarn – but, as he told NME, “I’ve made it on an iPad – I hope I’ll be making the first record on an iPad. I fell in love with my iPad as soon as I got it, so I’ve made a completely different kind of record.” He also noted that he definitely wants the album out before Christmas. This also comes a shock as the previous album, March 2010’s Plastic Beach, came out after a five-year hiatus. Now he’s trying to tell us that only nine months later, a new album is almost complete? Insanity.

Albarn recently noted that the new album would be very different and have a definitive American feel to it. “It’s basically a tour-diary as a record,” he professed. “I guess it’s my love-letter to America.”

Stay tuned for more info.

In the meantime check out this great video that outlines the recent Gorillaz story.

The basic service for Spotify is based around building a library of music. It essentially lures users by allowing them build a catalog of music on either the free, ad-supported version or the cheaper computer-only version. Then, when the user wants to make that collection portable, Spotify is able to charge more. As Parker noted, “You have no choice. We’ve got you by the balls, you’ll have to become a subscriber.”

Watch the entirety of Parker’s speech at the Reboot America! Summit below:

However, as Billboard notes, this claim is not exactly true. The website states:

Parker’s assessment is based on two requirements: that Spotify users truly are not content to have the service only on their home computers, and that there are no viable mobile alternatives. The service has over 10 million registered users in its seven active markets. Somewhere in the area of 500,000 of those users are paying subscribers. Spotify has not broken down how many paying customers have the more expensive mobile option.

At this point, it’s only been launched in the UK, but he hopes to bring it to the US by next year.

What do you think: will this site be another disruptive service for the industry, or will it actually seek to help it?

Gorillaz mastermind (among other things) Damon Albarn has announced he’s currently at work on up to three different albums at once. This announcement comes in the midst of the Gorillaz’s massive North American tour, which recently has been traipsing along the West coast.

This is an interesting development, as Albarn had originally stated the last Gorillaz album almost wasn’t a Gorillaz album at all. In the November 2007 issue of Q, when asked what his top priority for 2008 was, Damon Albarn replied “Well, I’m doing the next Gorillaz thing, but it won’t be called Gorillaz.” At that point, he hadn’t actually planned to do another Gorillaz album, but that obviously didn’t play out. In fact, months later his co-hort Jamie Hewlett noted to The Observer, “Gorillaz now to us is not like four animated characters any more — it’s more like an organization of people doing new projects. That’s my ideal model — Gorillaz is a group of people who gave you this, and now want to give you new stuff.”

This past week, Albarn told stuff.co.nz that, “There’s another Gorillaz record I’m finishing up too. I’ve actually taken a mobile studio with me on this tour, because it’s the longest I’ve been out on the road since, as I say, the days of Blur at its peak, so I have that luxury now of recording as I go.”

And what will the new Gorillaz record be like?

It’s basically a tour-diary as a record, I guess it’s my love-letter to America. I used to be very baffled by this place, and I guess I still am in some ways; America confused me enormously. But right now with all that’s going on this is a good place to be and this has been a great tour, the shows have been very special. The audiences are the closest to mid-90s Blur audiences; I mean it’s really been wonderful. And we’re getting to play to good-sized crowds. And they know this music; they’re really into it. They know it well. So that’s great. I mean that’s what it’s about, right?

In addition to the new Gorillaz tunes, he’s also dusting off another recent collaboration, The Good, The Bad, and The Queen. When asked if there will be another record for that project, he responded, “Well, I would hope so, definitely. However, he seems more focused on a new band that he is “three-quarters of the way through and needs to get finished.”

This new project may surprise some fans, as seemingly the ever-open Flea has jumped on for bass work. Albarn noted, “The album that is three-quarters finished is another band with Tony Allen; centered around what he does. But this time it’s him and me and Flea from The Red Hot Chili Peppers and some of my favorite African musicians will be involved also. Flea of course is an anagram for Fela and Flea is so into this music — so that’s been great.” That band seems to be unnamed at the moment, but it sounds intriguing.

What do you think would be a good name for this new band?