This Is Fake DIY 2006-06-19 – Interview: Muse
Interview: Muse
Muse release the first single from their forthcoming album, 'Supermassive Black Hole' today (June 19th), and the album ' Black Holes And Revelations' follows on 3rd July. They're due to appear at various festivals across the summer to promote the release, including Reading and Leeds in the UK, Summersonic in Japan, and Werchter in Belgium. We spoke to drummer Dominic Howard for a brief catch-up.
The new album's been pretty heavily anticipated, are you happy with it?
Extremely. I'm very happy. It's great, and has come out very well, showing all our different ideas and influences. We're very happy, just anxious to tour it!
How do you feel about it leaking last week?
It's inevitable that these things happen, but it's just a shame that whoever did it knobbed it up - it leaked in mono rather than stereo, which compromised the sound quality. The record label likes to sit on records for ages, so it was going to happen once they started sending CDs to magazines.
The new single is pretty massively different. Was it a conscious decision to go out to shock people?
It is the album's extreme left turn. We put it out first to show we've moved on, we also thought it'd work well as a single - we'd like to hope it makes you want to dance! It shows we've evolved, and we're not afraid to try new things.
You recorded the album in New York: did that influence its sound in any way?
Yes. We started off in the South of France, got in and wrote, experimented a lot, and it got too much, too deep. It was really secluded, the songs were really long, and we found it hard to make decisions. New York helped us speed it all up - the fast pace of the city made decisions much easier to make, it was a nice environment to work in. The energy helped too, and going out to clubs playing music we didn't know - it was R n' B, and everyone was dancing to it - we liked that, I think that put the groove in there, especially ' Supermassive Black Hole'. Then we went on to Italy, where the songs changed more still.
Are you ready to take the new stuff on the road?
Pretty much. We're rehearsing ' Take A Bow' today, it's our first proper show this weekend in Germany, so we've got to do more work, sort out setlists, and also remember how to play some of the older material!
There's a bit of a Western style vibe to some of the album. How did you come up with that idea?
It's spaghetti Western. Matt lives in Italy, and he'd introduced us to someone who was really in to Southern Italian folk music, which spread to North Africa, and Turkey. That's where it comes from, and the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone, that's what we tried to do in Knights of Cydonia, make it really visual. Other influences came from 1950s sci-fi music, B-movies, etc and Matt's dad's band - the first British band to have a US Number One - especially in Exo-politics, [sic] they played space-surf-rock type stuff.
You're playing Reading after Arctic Monkeys. They've had a massive year, do you think you'll be able to upstage them? Any special plans?
Yes, we've got plans. But we can't say what they are. We're not really uncomfortable playing after anyone. We'll do our own thing.
Emma Swann