• on air
• artists
• music news
• gigs & tickets
• breakfast
• o2 academy

Muse on 'Absolution'

added 02 October 2003 at 11.58

The Devon rock trio are back with their third full-length studio album entitled 'Absolution'.

After releasing hugely successful singles 'Stockholm Syndrome' and 'Time Is Running Out', Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenhome and Dom Howard return with their long-awaited third studio album 'Absolution'. Here, you can find out what's behind every single song on the album as Matt and Dom from the band talk John Kennedy trough it, track by track.

Read interview highlights below, then hit [listen] to hear the whole run-down on that track.

'Apocalypse Please'
"That song, in some ways, sets the stage for the entire album. It was designed as an intro and sings about religious fanaticism and wanting old prophecies to come true, like Armageddon and stuff, which is probably what is going on in a lot of extremely fanatical religious people out there." [listen]

'Time Is Running Out'
"We definitely worked with finding new sounds, and we tried rubbing our hands together and slapping and clapping, all that kind of thing, which is something we'd thought about doing and features quite heavily on this song. You know, finger clicking and stuff." [listen]
 
'Sing for Absolution'
"You try and let your emotions take over a little bit and see where it goes; and funny things happen, especially in a three-piece band. I think we can tune into each other quite well and can see where a lot of the dynamic shifts within that song were made in that process." [listen]

'Stockholm Syndrome'
"That song was something, we liked our riffs so much, we wanted to make it somehow into a song and it starts off with this riff and then evolves into this chord structure somehow. I am trying to think what we were going for with this song. Just an epic piece of Rock." [listen]

'Falling Away With You'
"It's kind of singing about when you have flashbacks to things. It's only things like scars, pictures, photos and videos and stuff that really make you understand that the past really did happen and I think that sometimes, if you don't keep records like that… I find the past can blur itself up a little bit, especially when it comes to relationships." [listen]

'Hysteria'
"Again that's one of those songs which had that riff and we played around with different ideas, different ways of playing it and ended up with this four-on-the-floor dancebeat, but slow and heavy and played in a Rock kind of way, which powered the song along." [listen]

'Blackout'
"That song came from a combination of influences, really. It's obvious influenced by the more classic types of songs that were going round before the '60s and '50s. I'm talking about the times of Frank Sinatra, that type of era where classical music was combining itself with popular song." [listen]

'Butterflies And Hurricanes'
"I think the original idea of that song was what I said to Dom on the plane - Dom and Chris playing this heavy rock and this orchestra kind of floating around this paradiddle where the heaviness is coming from the piano. So that's how it started but then, obviously, in the process of rehearsing it came back slightly different." [listen]

'TSP'
"It was between this other song and 'TSP', to get on the album. It ended up being 'TSP' because I think we just wanted to have something which was a bit more high in energy, more speed as well, whereas the other track was very slow." [listen]

'Endlessly'
"It's one of those songs where we ended up using organic instruments, acoustic instruments because our knowledge of that side of music, that genre of music [Dance/Electronica] isn't that vast so we just thought, let's use the acoustic instruments and try and make something in that style." [listen]

'Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist'
"This is definitely influenced by the Smiths, I think. A combination of The Smiths and again with a Frank Sinatra type or classic type chord structure in the chorus. If you play the chorus in that song very slowly it sounds very classic sounding and not the way it ended up." [listen]

'Ruled By Secrecy'
"It's similar to the first song on the album in the way that I'm in character a little bit when I'm singing. I'm singing from the point of view of someone who is working in a job they're not really happy with because they feel like they're banging away at something, and they're working for someone else they basically never meet or see." [listen]

www.muse-official.com 

Back to the Xfm Track-by-Track archive

• send to a friend