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Keane are set to return to the studio to begin work on their third album - and they have suggested Dr. Dre could be a big influence on the record.

Speaking on the band’s official website, drummer Richard Hughes said the group were already working on ideas for the follow-up to last year's ’Under The Iron Sea’.

Explaining that "[he] can’t see [them] starting recording before Christmas”, Hughes suggested that sessions will take a different course to their last album, which saw the band temporarily split up during the making of the record.

“We’ve said in the past that we don’t want to just churn out records that are the same,” he explained. “We've got some time in our barn, the HQ, which we're going to spend working on stuff in advance. We're mainly trying to work out if the songs are right, because I think Tim and Tom want to know. We've been having a few weeks of not doing anything, just a bit of a holiday, a bit of a chance to take a breather.

"I think they want to feel confident about how many songs we've got, so that's why we're principally doing it, but for me it's a great chance to get going on drum tracks. But, absolutely, we want to do it slightly differently. Well, I do."

The drummer added that the band are looking to widen their influences for their third effort.

"We're going to try and do something different with the next one. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out of America that's... I mean, I've been listening to people like Dr. Dre for a long time, I think '2001''s a ridiculously amazing record and its probably the most played thing on my iPod," he explained. "I love the sparseness of that, and the last record was really dense, it was full of stuff.

"So maybe we'll try something that's as empty as possible. There's certainly elements of that that you could experiment with. You could try and be more minimal in your approach with instruments and try to get a bit more funk in there. We'll see! Or it might just be a rock album – you know, I don't know. But yeah, we're going to try and do something different."

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Date/Time	Venue	Town/City	Seetickets	Viagogo
Mar 09, 2012 19:30	De La Warr Pavilion	Bexhill-on-sea	Tickets not currently available.	Buy Keane Tickets from £34
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Mar 10, 2012 19:30	De La Warr Pavilion	Bexhill-on-sea	Tickets not currently available.	Buy Keane Tickets from £45