REM To Start New Album This Year

REM are to return from their hiatus at the end of 2006 to record a new album according to drummer Bill Rieflin.

The band are currently taking time out after two years of touring which finished last July in London.

Rieflin told Billboard: "The band's on hiatus. The idea at the end of the last tour, which ended in July, was really to take a year off, without having to even think about it.?

"There was a three-year period of quite intense work, (so this is) some needed time off. There's some discussion about cranking things up in autumn, maybe winter."

Despite the break Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck recently linked up with former drummer Bill Berry to perform alongside Buck?s other band The Minus 5.