AlloMusic 2009-07-21 – Un nouveau Muse inspiré
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An interview with Dominic Howard on AlloMusic. This transcription is probably inaccurate.
Dominic Howard:
Um, well, there's ... the last three songs—
Interviewer: Yeah.
H: ...which is one song really, it's uh—
I: Kept in three parts.
H: Yeah. Exogenesis is kind of a symphony.
I: Mm.
H: Um, yeah we played with uh, um, well, a bunch of string players, there was about 30 people—
I: Yeah.
H: ...I think. Um... and I thi... I suppose that, that song is born out of like, all the kind of, the more kind of free, loose, kind of piano stuff...
I: Yeah.
H: ...that Matt often plays you know, whenever we're on tour, wherever we are you know, there's all this kind of stuff that he plays that sometimes is very very, you know, it's quite hard to get that into the band, 'cause it's, 'cause it's—
I: It's piano.
H: It's loose and it's well ... and it's very classical-based piano—
I: Okay.
H: ...and um, but you know, the years you know, I've always listened to him playing and think you know, it's lovely, it's great, you know, all nice pieces. It's hard for him to kind of, for all of us and for him to structure them into something that is... a song, I suppose.
I: Yeah.
H: You know,—
I: Of course.
H: ...with lyrics and other instruments and—
I: ...and a rock song
H: ...and a rock song, kind of, yeah. Uh, so that's symphony was like our attempt to pull in a lot of those ideas in and uh... and yeah and the orchestral stuff had to... felt like it had to be uh, part of it but you know, we were proper like proper—
I: Is it—
H: Classic FM style [laughs]
I: Classic FM, exactly, you, your new way to promote.
H: But it sounds really amazing you know, it's very kind of film sounding as well an'... it's um, yeah you know, it comes up lots of visuals with that song you know, it's a really really, nice piece.
[...]
H: I think we'll try.
I: You'll try.
H: [laughs] ...but I'm not sure how we're gonna do it, to be honest like right now, we haven't actually started rehearsing yet, so uh I dunno how we're gonna do it yet. I mean we've always had a fourth person, well, on our last album we had a fourth person—
I: Mm hm.
H: ...playing with us live, which helped us you know, expand the sound slightly. Um, so we'd have to figure it out, but it's gonna be very very hard, I mean maybe it can only, it should only be special occasions when we can have like some strings—
I: Like large places.
H: Yeah. I mean like, I'm sure we'll definitely... um do,—
I: Try to—
H: ...do, do a few performances with a lot of string players, you know and go for the, go for a big orchestral, kind of sound. That would be amazing you know, if we could pull it off.
I: Of course.
H: ...but... I'm not sure whether we'd be able to do that every day, on long tours.
[...]
H: Yeah, I don't actually know what they're doing, actually, they're doing like, I dunno about the opera. Um, I think, you know, the live show is always evolving, I think that we've always wanted to do something that's a bit more kind of theatrical if, if we can...
I: Mm hm
H: ...um, uh, again that's something that we're just working on right now, so—
I: So you'll see if...
H: ...yeah, we'll definitely, you know we're looking at having something, some huge—
I: Something new?
H: ...some big spinning structure.
[...]
H: We don't really, it's not really pre-conceived that you want to surprise people, you just, you just make the music that you feel, you know.
I: Okay, so that's...
H: So yeah, yo— I mean you always, you start off doing it for yourself, not, not for others you know, um, but at the same time we definitely have always liked to feel like, we're doing something a bit different than [sic] last time, you know.
I: Yeah.
H: ...or just experimenting a bit more or um, I think this time we felt more comfortable to uh, experiment some of the ideas that we'd thought about you know, in the past, but thought about over the past few years—
I: Mm.
H: ...whenever we've had the chance to do them ...and this time it was a bit different 'cause we kind of produced and we had our own studio to record it all in, uh, which is really really great, but it kind of, gives this, quite relaxed environment to do it all in, we didn't feel like we had to... pack up all our gear—
I: [laughs]
H: ...and leave in a couple of weeks, you know. So...
I: Okay, you had time.
H: Yeah we had time just to...
I: ...nice place.
H: ...kind of, experiment with all our ideas and, and feel rushed in any kind of way...
I: Okay.
H: ...so...
I: It's eclectic [?] something.
H: Yeah, I mean, some of it is like, Undisclosed Desires is very very uh, very electric sounding, programmed... and something very different.
[...]
I: Um, yeah, well we're starting um, we're going to, starting September, going to America for a little bit and then we go, come back and do big European tour in like, October, October-November. I mean, we're touring for the next year and a half, two years or something, that's...
H: Okay.
I: ...how it normally works, you just fly around the world like.
[...]
H: Okay, I'd put some Justice on there...
I: Yeah.
H: ...we'll put some Jimi Hendrix on there...
I: Yeah.
H: ...and let's put on Foxy Lady ...um, I've just been listening to the new Mars Volta album, but uh, I don't know any of the track titles, Hotel California by the Eagles,...
I: Inspiration.
H: I dunno why I said that, I'd just— heard of it.
I: Maybe it's something inspired you.
H: Yeah— no, I always though it was some cheesy song but, deep...
[...]
H: I don't think that I have actually.
I: [laughs] You're not quite sure.
H: [laughs] No, I can't remember what I said.
I: Maybe [?] [laughs]
H: Uhhh, maybe a little bit [?] yeah yeah but, you know, it came to me so, it must have... they're all quite current, everything on the playlist is reasonably current.
I: Okay, thank you, thanks a lot.
H: Okay, thank you, cheers.