Kinetic plans campaign to take Ash past 1m US sales. (International).

US independent Kinetic Records has set an ambitious 1m sales target for Ash's Free For Angels album across the Atlantic, as the band prepare for a Stateside tour with Coldplay.

The company, which signed the band for a multi-album deal in February this year, has earmarked the group as a key priority for this year and beyond, with playlist support already in place with MTV2 for Burn Baby Burn. Ash take to the road in the US this week with Moby, while a US support slot with Coldplay follows in the autumn.

"Ash is our number one priority," says Kinetic Records founder and president Steve Lau. "This is back to basics for us and it is an important time for our company--we are a very small label and we feel Ash are going to take us to the next level as a label. There is a lot riding on this and we are personally vested in it."

Previous US deals for Ash with Warner and then DreamWorks delivered sales of 42,000 for 1977 and just more than 7,000 for Nu Clear Sounds: lack of commitment and bad timing played their part in the varied performance, says Lau.

"I think it was a combination of a lot of things--from a writing perspective, the last album Nu Clear Sounds was not as commercially viable, there was not the commitment from the label and timing all added up," he says.

"From a commercial basis and from a consumer perspective, we are not building on a whole lot, but a ...