The Cure’s now a few day into a month-long break in its summer festival tour, and frontman Robert Smith says the band will use the time to record with new guitarist Reeves Gabrels for the first time — plus, he claims, the long-promised ‘Mixed Up 2’ will come out before Christmas with new remixes by the likes of Mogwai and Cranes.

Earlier this year, Martin Gore promised the next Depeche Mode album will be out ‘no later than early 2013,’ and now we’ve got a better idea of what that means: DM manager Jonathan Kessler tells Rolling Stone that the band’s 13th studio album is due out in April 2013 and will be followed by a ‘full world tour.’

Gary Numan next month will release ‘Big Noise Transmission,’ a live document of a concert recorded at the HMV Ritz in Manchester, England, last December that will arrive in three formats: a 2CD set, a 20-song PAL format DVD and a limited collectors’ edition featuring the 2CD set and a hardbound photo book.

Wax Trax!-era industrial rockers My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult will embark on a seven-week tour of the U.K. this fall to mark their 25th anniversary, a trek dubbed Back From Beyond! that also will find the group performing tracks off the upcoming debut from Bomb Gang Girlz, Thrill Kill Kult’s long-running group of backing singers.

Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant has enlisted former bandmate and current Wild Swans bassist Les Pattinson to take part in a new instrumental band called Poltergeist that he says falls ‘somewhere between krautrock and prog rock,’ and which already is rehearing in Liverpool in advance of recording a four-track EP.

Talking Heads offshoot Tom Tom Club — namely husband-and-wife rhythm section Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz — this September will release a new EP dubbed ‘Downtown Rockers’ both digitally and on vinyl, marking the duo’s first collection of new music since 2000’s ‘The Good, The Bad and The Funky.’

The Specials next month will release a 26-track live album dubbed ‘More… Or Less: The Specials Live’ in both 2CD and 2LP formats, collecting “the best of the best tracks” from U.K. and European dates on the band’s 2011 reunion tour, EMI Catalogue announced this morning.