Translated in English :

Hamburg/Los Angeles (dpa) - Tokio Hotel will release their single “Automatisch” two weeks before their new album “Humanoid”. The English version will be called “Automatic”.

“Bill and Tom were on the way from their hotel to our studio, because we wanted to record the vocals with Bill,” producer David Jost says to dpa. “Right before they got to the studio, Bill called me from the car and said that he just had an idea for a song that was supposed to be called “Automatisch”.”
The recording of the vocals were postponed at that point. “We finished writing the song in less than two hours in the studio,” Jost reports, who is also the manager of the band. “It wasn’t that easy with all the songs; we had to fight for some of them for nights on end.”

“It’s different for every song,” singer Bill Kaulitz says. “We don’t have a recipe. There are some songs of which we had several variations until we were satisfied with them.” Next to Bill, his twin brother Tom, as well as drummer Gustav Schäfer and bassist Georg Listing are part of Tokio Hotel.

a-ha on ‘Friday Night with Jonathan Ross’
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a-ha will be guests on the 24 July season finale of ‘Friday Night with Jonathan Ross’. Other guests on the show include Denzel Washington and Quentin Tarantino.

‘Friday Night with Jonathan Ross’ is an extremely popular UK television talk show, and so important within the UK market that the band felt it was essential to adjust their album promotion plan around this appearance. This will be the first UK television performance of the new single ‘Foot of the Mountain’; the band is expected to play one other song, and have a chat with Jonathan as well.

The show will be broadcast on Friday 24 July at 10:35pm, and will repeat on 25 July. For fans in America, the BBC America network will broadcast the show sometime in the coming weeks. The show may also be available on other networks around the world; check your listings for showtimes.

LINKS
Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
Episode Details
BBC America

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IIAF World Championships Official Song
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The 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics will take place in Berlin from 15-23 August, 2009, and ‘Foot of the Mountain’ has been chosen as the official song for the event!

According to the Berlin2009.org site, “The Norwegian cult band ‘a-ha’ provides the official World Championships’ song, the current hit ‘Foot of the Mountain’.” The song will be played quite often in the background of athletic events and other programming, all of which will be broadcast in over 190 countries around the world.

In addition, a-ha will perform two songs at the opening event on 14 August in Berlin.

‘Foot of the Mountain’ continues to do well in the German charts. The single entered the charts at #3 and has remained in the Top 20 ever since its release in May, and the album has spent five weeks in the Top 10 - and currently has the distinction of being the only album not by Michael Jackson within the German Top 10 chart.

LINKS
Berlin 2009

According to this article in Die Zeit

Original text and translation below :

Neues Album von Tokio Hotel heißt «Humanoid»

Hamburg (dpa) - Die Fans von Tokio Hotel müssen nicht mehr lange warten: Das neue Album der Magdeburger Teenie-Rocker kommt in der ersten Oktoberwoche heraus und heißt «Humanoid». Das teilte Band-Manager David Jost der Deutschen Presse-Agentur dpa mit.

«Bill (Kaulitz) wollte, dass das neue Album weltweit nur einen Namen trägt», erklärte Jost. Das Wort «Humanoid» ist der Science-Fiction-Sprache entnommen und bedeutet menschenähnlich.
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Die ersten beiden Longplayer der international erfolgreichen Musiker bekamen für den englischsprachigen Markt noch einen anderen Namen: «Scream» für das erste Album «Schrei», das im September 2005 herauskam, und «Room 483» für «Zimmer 483» vom Februar 2007.

Zu Tokio Hotel gehören neben Sänger Bill Kaulitz (19) sein Zwillingsbruder Tom Kaulitz (Gitarre), Schlagzeuger Gustav Schäfer (20) und Bassist Georg Listing (22). Die Band hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren zu einem deutschen Exportschlager gemausert, ihre Songs stürmten die Charts in mehreren Ländern.

Nach Preisen in der Heimat («Goldene Stimmgabel», «Echo», «Goldene Kamera») folgte 2008 der internationale Siegeszug: Die Musiker wurden beste Nachwuchsband bei den MTV Video Music Awards in den USA, räumten als erste deutsche Gruppe bei den MTV Latin America Awards ab und gewannen als beste Liveband bei den MTV Europe Music Awards.

Tokio Hotel fans don’t have to wait much longer: The new album of the Magdeburger teenie-rockers will be released on the first week of October, and it will be called “Humanoid”. The band’s manager David Jost informed Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA).

“Bill (Kaulitz) wanted the new album to go around the world with just one name,” said Jost. The word “humanoid” is the science-fiction and the term is derived from the word “anthropoid”.

The first two albums of the internationally successful musicians had the titles different for their English-speaking market: “Scream” for the first album “Schrei”, which came out in September 2005, and “Room 483″ for “Zimmer 483″ released February 2007.

Tokio Hotel is composed of singer Bill Kaulitz (19), his twin brother Tom Kaulitz (guitar), drummer Gustav Schäfer (20) and bassist Georg Listing (22). In the last few years, the band has become a German export hit, their songs have stormed the charts in several countries.

They have won several awards locally («Goldene Stimmgabel», «Echo», «Goldene Kamera») and has been successful internationally in 2008: The musicians were the Best Young Band at the MTV Video Music Awards in the U.S., acknowledged as the first German group at the MTV Latin America Awards and won for Best Live Band at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

So : the first entries got me lol-ing in “oh please, tell me it’s not going to be the whole blog?”

And this one is… actually, I think there’s a rule in advirtising that if you want to sell anything, all you have to do is add a cute animal or a baby to it? Yeah. And the rule in blogging is that everyone loves cute animals.

“Let me introduce? The real star of my video announcement, when he was a puppy”.

Not complaining. After all, we did all watch at the dog rather than him in the video, didn’t we?

Video announcement by Tom

Basically just announcing that he’s due to write a blog for the band’s official website on tokiohotel.com.
And that they’ll let us know about when the new single will be released.
(… yeah, I’m “translating” because even though he speaks in English in this announcement, uh… guess it may be more understandable for someone who isn’t a native English-speaker).

… Hide your joy, Tom, you look so excited by this.

This from the news letter… :

Universal Norway Invites You…

The folks at Universal Norway will be hosting a listening party for “Foot of the Mountain” on June 8! To listen to all the tracks on the new record, you’ll have to sign up on the Universal site. We’ll have a link to the listening party for you very soon, so check the site or follow us via Twitter or Facebook for updates!

Also of note for fans in Norway only, the presale of the album will be launched with Platekompaniet via the Universal listening session page.

a-ha.com News
Twitter
Facebook

A Change is Coming

To mark the new album release, a-ha.com will be undergoing a design change that you’ll see on the original release date of June 19. We’re rebuilding from scratch, so if you notice any sections missing, don’t worry, we’ll have them back online very shortly.

In other site news, we will be offering Foot of the Mountain as a digital album in the a-ha.com Shop to fans outside of Europe.

a-ha.com Digital Albums - http://links.mkt2259.com/ctt?kn=3&m=2571743&r=MTYxOTQyNDYzMjIS1&b=2&j=NzMyNDAwODkS1&mt=1&rt=0

VG Concert

On June 19, a-ha will perform on the VG top 20 chart show in Oslo, Norway. The outdoor concert will be held in front of the Oslo town hall and is a free event. Fans who cannot attend the concert in Oslo can follow the show directly on NRK 1 or 2 via webcast beginning around 8:55 pm Norwegian time. Visit a-ha.com for more details on this event.

NRK Webcast
VG Concert Information

New on a-ha.com

In case you missed it, we’ve got two new Interviews on the site; one with a-ha’s new drummer, Karl Oluf Wennerberg, and the other with album designer Martin Kvamme.

We’ve also got updated information on a-ha’s upcoming appearances on television and radio. Check this page often for new updates.

Interviews
Media Appearances

Once it was back, there wasn’t anything much new on it, apart from a slight revamp of the interface, and a new background picture that has nothing to do with TH, really. Go figure.

German site
US site

Actual news :
- posted on May 23 but not viewable before the re-launch on June 1, an announcement about the T-shirt designed by TH for H&M’s campaign Fashion Against AIDS
- since I reckon the officials heard of the global reaction of fandom at the relaunch (”EPIC FAIL”), a little message from Bill & Tom was promptly added :

June does mark the band’s official return in the media, though, since Bild has released an article with pictures of Tom’s night out in L.A. with a pretty young blonde US singer, Chantelle Paige, with hints that there could be more to it than a few drinks shared at a bar.

Article in Bild

It’s probably a convenient coincidence that Chantelle is the singer of a band (Flipsyde) that is produced by Interscope, TH’s US record company, and that this happens right when TH are trying to get back in the news and Flipsyde has released their album in Germany last week, and nobody knew who they were.

Since that piece of “news” has been in Bild, Bravo and on RTL Punkt 12 already, now Flipsyde got some press cover for (almost) free.

(this doesn’t exclude the possibility of a fun night for all, of course. Mixing business and pleasure is a bonus. Just pointing out the obvious).

The video is hilarious :

Mr and Mrs show video

Recorded on May 22, 2009 in the Olympiahalle in München. Aired on May 30, 2009 on RTL2.

The single ‘Foot of the Mountain’

Also release dates have been updated on the official site :

Confirmed release dates:
The countries are listed in alphabetical order. Please check back for updates.

Austria: May 22, 2009
Denmark: May 25, 2009
Germany: May 22, 2009
Norway:
- Single to radio: April 24, 2009
- Single release: May 4, 2009 (download only)
Switzerland: May 22, 2009
United Kingdom:
- Single radio premiere: April 29, 2009 (Radio 2)
- Single release: July 13, 2009

The album ‘Foot of the Mountain’

‘Foot of the Mountain’ album cover, designed by Martin Kvamme

Confirmed release dates:
The countries are listed in alphabetical order. Please check back for updates.

Austria: June 19, 2009
Germany: June 12, 2009
Norway: June 22, 2009
Switzerland: June 19, 2009
United Kingdom: July 20, 2009

A thank you video from Bill was aired at the show - recorded at the same time as the TRL one, by the look of it.

Thank you video - what a chatterbox when he speaks in German! ^__^