U2 DISCO: There’s a new U2 album...

U2 DISCO: There’s a new U2 album being released soon . . . but don’t look for it in record stores.

“Melon,” a collection of nine dance remixes of six songs from the band’s “Achtung Baby” and “Zooropa” albums, will be distributed as a “freebie” with the winter-spring issue of the band’s international fan magazine Propaganda. It’s due to be mailed in about two weeks.

“It’s just a belated Christmas gift to fans,” says Paul Wasserman, the group’s U.S. spokesman.

“Lemon,” “Salome,” “Numb,” “Mysterious Ways,” “Stay” and “Even Better Than the Real Thing” are the songs that have been remixed by such noted dance-club figures as Manchester duo Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne, the group Massive Attack and David Morales.

The project was conceived by Island Records executive Nick Angel two years ago after a remixed version of “Mysterious Ways” became a bigger hit around the world than the regular album version. Original plans called for a commercial release of the album, but the band ultimately voted to make it a special bonus release, limited to Propaganda’s base of approximately 50,000 subscribers.

Which raises the inevitable matter of bootlegging.

“If you don’t make many available . . . the people who can’t get it by fair means will get it through foul,” Angel is quoted as saying in the upcoming issue of Propaganda. “I’m sure it will be massively bootlegged. I think it’s just one of those things you have to accept.”

(Fans can subscribe to four issues of Propaganda by sending an $18 check or money order to 119 Rockland Center, Box 350, Nanvet, N.Y. 10954.)

Meanwhile, Wasserman reports, U2 is “inching” toward the studio to record a new “real” album. At the band’s annual Christmas party in Dublin, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. gave hints that the group intends to move forward with the sonic experiments of recent years.

“U2 won’t be revealing any details about our next project,” Mullen said. “But the technological expertise we have assembled at our Dublin headquarters will undoubtedly go marching on.”