Madonna
Photo: Warner Bros.

After plunging into marriage, Madonna is now saving herself — or at least her new material — for her next studio album.

Fans won't find any new tunes on her latest best-of collection, GHV2 (see "Madonna To Release New Greatest Hits Collection") — despite the appearance of then-new songs "Rescue Me" and "Justify My Love" on her last best-of, 1990's The Immaculate Collection — because the pop star already has an album of fresh material in the works.

Madonna plans to start recording the disc in England in January, though no release date has been set, according to her label. She will be teaming up once again with French producer Mirwais, who manned the boards for her last album of new material, Music (2000).

Her spokespeople said the pop icon is also considering pairing up with Les Rythmes Digitales' Jacques Lu Cont, who worked as her musical director and keyboardist on her Drowned World Tour (see "Madonna Taps Les Rythmes Digitales Mastermind For Tour").

Madonna discussed the plans for her next album in an interview the BBC aired Friday.

"[Lu Cont and I] fooled around with remixes and redoing a lot of the tracks for the actual live show," Madonna told the BBC. "Then we talked about working on stuff for my next album, and he's already working on music for me. So I'm going to try that collaboration as well."

Both Mirwais and Lu Cont have home studios, so the writing for the album may be split between the two, she added, with recording to be completed in a larger studio elsewhere. It would seem, from these two collaborations Madonna has in mind, that her new album would continue along the lines of the bass-heavy French house music heard on Music, but her latest listening habits suggest she may have new — or, rather, old — influences this time around.

"Because I've been away making a movie on location (husband Guy Ritchie's 'Love, Sex, Drugs, Money' in Sardinia and Malta), I ended up listening to old music like Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong," she said. "I've been listening to old music more lately than current music."

• Madonna
• Les Rythmes Digitales
• Mirwais

Madonna
Photo: MTV Europe

Given her recent co-opting of the French house-music sound popularized by the likes of Les Rythmes Digitales, it should come as no surprise that Madonna has brought Digitales mastermind Jacques Lu Cont on board for her Drowned World Tour. Lu Cont will be doing double duty on the tour as Madonna's bassist and keyboard player, a publicist from his label, Astralwerks, said. The world tour kicks off June 5 in Cologne, Germany (see "Madonna Taking Music On The Road").

Right now, he's in Los Angeles with the rest of Madonna's touring band, where they're in the midst of a rigorous rehearsal schedule — 13 hours a day, five days a week, according to the Astralwerks spokesperson. Calls to Madonna's spokespeople regarding her full touring lineup were not returned by press time.

Lu Cont has been making the kind of bass-heavy house music like that heard on Music since the mid-'90s. His Les Rythmes Digitales first surfaced in 1998 with the club hit "Jacques Your Body (Make Me Sweat)." Madonna's invitation isn't Lu Cont's first brush with celebrity — designer Donatella Versace hired him to play the launch party of her fashion line in 1999.

• Madonna
• Les Rythmes Digitales