Inside Nokia Music

Back again, flying the Muse flag high on the insidenokiamusic blog as usual, this time it’s all about the third single Resistance from the massively successful 5th album The Resistance.

I’m far more excited about the release of a new single this time around because, unlike first single Uprising with it’s solitary b-side that circulated several months before it’s release, and second single Undisclosed Desires which didn’t have any at all, Resistance has answered my prayers and will feature 2 new songs, as well as the obligatory radio edit and a remix by Tiesto.

the first new track is a cover of Prague by Mega City Four. The second is again a cover, this time of Popcorn by Hot Butter, a track I believe the band live debuted during their highly acclaimed homecoming double-nighter “A Seaside Rendezvous” a week or so before the release of The Resistance. It’s a song I doubt any other rock band could cover and still keep their credibility intact, but the swirling synths are right up Muse’s alley. Sadly this track only appears to be available on a limited edition 7″ single exclusive to the band’s official website.

The entire Muse catalogue is available to download from the Nokia Music Store and is completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers. Resistance is released this coming Monday 22nd February.

Muse fans at Big Day Out 2010 in Sydney and Melbourne we’re treated to a cover of AC/DC’s Back In Black with and incredible Brian Johnson impersonation by Jet’s Nick Cester. According to Muse drummer Dom Howard in this video, AC/DC have never even played the Big Day Out, which in my opinion is a sad state of affairs for Australia’s greatest ever Rock band.

Muse and Jet are available to download from the Nokia Music Store and are completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers.

The music video for Muse – The Resistance third single Resistance premiered today at mtv.co.uk and is a little lacklustre as it’s just recent tour footage, probably due to a busy schedule with touring and hopefully contributions to the Clash Of The Titans score (article). That’s forgivable if unlike previous single Undisclosed Desires it features at least one proper b-side. Here’s what I’m hoping for, it’s the show opener from The Resistance Tour fittingly known as We Are The Universe, though this version is allegedly not made by the band but rather someone-who-knows-someone-who has access to the samples… Regardless, it’s freaking brilliant!

Resistance (Single) is due for release on 22nd February 2010 and the entire Muse back-catalogue is available now to download from The Nokia Music Store and is completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers.

Muse frontman and virtual virtuoso Matt Bellamy was approached to Score the forthcoming epic Clash Of The Titans. Due in March this year already, I’m reluctant to believe there’s actually enough time left for them to do it with The Resistance tour schedule, never mind that I had the foolish notion to believe a Film Score develops during filming for mood and atmosphere instead of the after-though of post production.

It’s fair to say I’m pretty excited about this after Sam Worthington’s show stealing performance in Terminator Salvation, and if Matt and the boys have contributed… then I may just wet myself.

The Resistance and the entire Muse back-catalogue are available to download from The Nokia Music Store and is completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers.

Update!

Since the news only came to light this week I made the fatal faux pas of assuming that the approach happened recently, it would now seem that the band were approached a while back regarding this and that Craig Armstrong has already scored the film. What’s still unclear is whether Muse have contributed…  here’s hoping!

Part 6:

Muse – The Resistance

The Resistance (reviewed) was my single most anticipated album of the year, just like Black Holes and Revelations before it and Absolution before that… solely for the reason that Origin Of Symmetry is the album that had the most profound effect on me this decade even though I only discovered it a year or so after it’s release. With my new found obsessive fandom this lined-up Absolution to what would in retrospect be my most anticipated album of the decade that truly delivered far and beyond.

Now obviously the anticipation factor was equally as high for Black Holes and Revelations and The Resistance, but ultimately I’ve found that although I love each album dearly, there’s a pattern of preference for each album before, it’s not that the band are in gradual decline, but feel are a little tainted by the increase in commercial appeal.

Thankfully they still in part touch back on the feel of previous albums to let us know they can still do it if that’s what they wanted.

Such is the case for The Resistance stand out tracks: Unnatural Selection, which could easily be from the Origin Of Symmetry sessions and not just because the riff is partially borrowed from New Born, but for the song’s feel as a whole… and MK Ultra which could easily have made a home on Absolution somewhere between The Small Print and Ruled By Secrecy.

Seen Them Live This Year:

Wouldn’t have missed it for the world… 12th November @ The O2 Arena London (reviewed)

The Resistance and the entire Muse back-catalogue are available to download from The Nokia Music Store and is completely free to ‘Comes With Music’ subscribers.

Photo courtesy of flickr user mandynau

The first thing I have to say about seeing Muse live for the 4th time is that it was easily one of my top 2, the other being at Wembley Arena back in 2003 for the Absolution Tour. The reason for this is the absence of primary tour musician Morgan Nicholls, I’ve got nothing against the dude and I understand the necessity for him as well as “The Trumpet Man” Dan Newell on the Black Holes and Revelations Tour, it’s just that part of the biggest attraction I have to Muse is the size of the sound the band are capable of creating as a 3-piece alone!… and it’s this experience we’re treated to tonight, at least for this phase of The Resistance Tour.

Show time reveals 3 towers standing at approximately 50′ and clad in LED screens lit up to resemble sky-scrapers. As each band member appears on a platform in the centre of the individual tower columns they open their set with the first new-album-single Uprising… the odds of a bet placed on this paying dividends are low, but non the less Muse are out of the starting gate at a gallop.

When touring for a new album it’s always a good idea to smash out 2 new songs back-to-back, and they do just that by following up with semi-title track Resistance. I’m not sure if it was just me but I’m pretty sure they had to improvise a timing correction during the opening sustained guitar interpretation of the synth key intro but ultimately came out on the other side shining.

Of the ever dwindling track count from Origin Of Symmetry I was particularly pleased they hadn’t dropped New Born from the setlist. As it blitzed through at a higher BPM than those tragically slow versions during the Black Holes and Revelations Tour it was certainly the perfect excuse for the potentially life-threatening laser show assault it accompanied and was followed by a jam I’ve come to learn is known as Headup Riff, one of the several new interlude jams that Muse littered their set with tonight baring some similarity to the famed Osaka Jam from the previous tour.

As my favourite Black Holes and Revolutions track, Map Of The Problematique is a welcomed sound and sets off my awkward and often embarrassing-to-friends need to air drum, but is sadly vaporized by my childish need to predict the next song before my gig companions (big-up to my man Carl!) and I pick it again as Matt Bellamy intro’s Supermassive Black Hole with he same I’ve-never-known-what-it’s-called-theramin-guitar-pad-thingy effect just as he did for those I’m-sorry-for-you-if-you-didn’t-attend Wembley Stadium shows.

Now I’ve heard a lot of people saying they’re not to keen on Invincible, sure some moments in the track are a little cringe-worthy but I find it’s worth the Middle-Eight Bass into and including that epic finger-tapping solo… but they don’t play it tonight! Thankfully an immediate relative of the song comes in the form of highlight-of-the-evening-for-me-tune Guiding Light. A song that I have no doubt will be absolutely hated by far more people than is justifiable. Nobody makes songs like this anymore, they’re era-forgotten and they’re over-the top, but Muse had the audacity to make such a song and that’s one of the reasons I love them so damn much.

After Guiding Light’s display of love and affection they play Absolution’s Interlude which raises the excitement as it’s an obvious indication that Hysteria is imminent… and they don’t disappoint as the stage columns appear as skyscrapers again, only this time they’re crumbling down as Chris Wolstenholme tears through the song’s ridiculously obscene beast of a bass line.

Interestingly, they play the Unintended b-side Nishe, which brings a brief calm to the arena before playing our first new-album-sound-bite-track United States Of Eurasia with imagery of a fragmented atlas and a collage of passport photographs collected from fan submissions on Muse’s official website, followed by an extremely well received Feeling Good and Unintended as well as another new interlude, Helsinki Jam.

After some debate about the colour of Matt Bellamy’s trousers with my gig buddy Carl, I begin to lean toward his argument and settle on Pink as Matt moves up stage with a Keytar for the performance of current single Undisclosed Desires.

Starlight gets the 1-2-1-3 hand-claps going but gets me paranoid as usual that the less-than-coordinated may embarrassingly throw the band out of time, but all works out fine in the end and they follow with the probably-never-won’t-play-at-a-gig Plug In Baby, complete with giant confetti-filled balloons. Surprisingly it’s Time Is Running Out that makes the standing area pulsate more than any other track here tonight and It’s Unnatural Selection that triggers my bizarre hybrid air guitar and drumming again.

Encore… and Chris steps out in the Captain America suit I was expecting him to wear for United States of Eurasia. Tragically Dom Howard wasn’t in his Spidey suit and there’s been no hint that Matt may be sporting a Marvel costume any time soon, something I’d have paid good money to see during this performance of Exogenesis Part 1: Overture. As incredible as it was, this is where the 40 piece orchestra that did the recording would have made it an unforgettable experience, but I guess we’re going to have to wait and see if this will be the case at Wembley Stadium 2010.

Stockholm Syndrome rocks the house to it’s foundations and features another new interlude War Within A Breath Riff with Chris joining Dom on his drum riser as it’s raised and rotates for the duration of the jam.

After a brief blackout we see Chris lightly spot-lit as he blows a single monotonous note with an harmonica, conjuring up the intro to show closer Knights Of Cydonia. Once again, it’s probably just me but I think the intro may have been extended a few measures… or I got lost in space and time somewhere between here and the songs intergalactic western world.

Great show, sound and performance!… unfortunately no Citizen Erased, no Piano version of Cave like on so many of the other shows on this tour and most heartbreaking of all, No MK Ultra!… I guess I’m just going to have to watch them again!

Edit this setlist | More Muse setlists

The Resistance and new single Undisclosed Desires are available to download from The Nokia Music Store

I saw this on the official Muse website yesterday and have been laughing about it ever since. I’m not sure what the deal is but I’m speculating that they were told they couldn’t perform live in the television studio and were likely requested to lip-synch the performance, and so this rather humorous switcheroo ensued. I think Dom (the real drummer) did a lip-synch job capable of jealousing the likes of the Britney Spears and found Matt (the real singer) equally convincing on the drums as well as highly entertaining.

The Resistance is available now for download at the Nokia Music Store

Remembering my first listen to 2006’s Black Holes and Revelations I wasn’t immediately convinced being a long standing fan of the Origin Of Symmetry era, Muse had evolved far beyond my comprehension and the album had to orbit the room a couple times before it came crash landing on my head revealing that the band had indeed ascended to a higher plane of genius.

Well now I’ve been lucky enough to get my grubby little mitts on a copy of The Resistance pre-release and can say on first hearing selected tracks before receiving this copy I was suffering the same stigma as I did for Black Holes and Revelations.

Firstly I find the album to have a far more expanded an open sound, something that sounds directly influenced by possible aspirations of repeated stadium success on the next tour. The album opens with lead single ‘Uprising’ and as a track built on a dance groove there have been mixed reviews. Purists complaining about the new direction and in another camp ‘Twilight Muse Fans’ (what purist Muse fans have taken to calling people who have only discovered them through ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ featuring on the Twilight Film Soundtrack) lapping it up as it expands on a more familiar sound to them. I find myself somewhere in the ether with a large contingency of fans who have thus far loved every incarnation and believe ‘Uprising’ is still high grade Muse.

‘Uprising’ is followed by title track ‘Resistance’ which reminds me of the Black Holes and Revelations masterpiece ‘Map Of The Problematique’ and is sure to be the albums second single.

This is followed up with the rather pop-esque ‘Undisclosed Desires’… a song that I can’t quite shake off comparing to Nelly Furtado’s ‘Say It Right’ from the ‘Loose’ era but love regardless.

‘United States Of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage)’ is brilliant in my opinion, the song’s intro is reminiscent of Showbiz single ‘Unintended’ and though being informally accused of plagiarizing the Queen sound I find it far too blatant for this to be the case and prefer to think of it as an homage. I’m particularly fond of the way Matt sings ‘Turning to dust’ in a Dracula voice and am looking forward to the live shows specifically for the ‘Eura-SIA SIA SIA’ part of the song. The song ends beautifully with an interpretation of  Chopin’s Nocturne In E-Flat Major, Op.9 No.2  in the form of ‘Collateral Damage’.

‘Guiding Light’ opens with huge stadium rock drums, is emotionally comparable to Black Holes and Revelations’ ‘Invincible’ and has an incredible shine on the chorus vocals. Musically the song feels like it could be from the eighties, a cross between almost anything from The Joshua Tree and Martika’s ‘Toy Soldiers’. It’s a beautiful song unlike anything ever done by Muse.

‘Unnatural Selection’ is the first song in the album that touches back on everything that I love about Muse, brain rock in the vein of Origin Of Symmetry’s ‘New Born’ but with a Strokes vibe in the pre-chorus and a moody breakdown similar to personal favourite ‘Citizen Erased’. For me this is Muse of the highest order.

Project MK ULTRA was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program (from wikipedia) and as Matt Bellamy in particular is so engulfed in conspiracy theories it’s only fitting for Muse to include a song like ‘MK Ultra’ on the album. Once again this is Muse doing what they do best, hooky arpeggiating synths, choppy guitar riffs, driving bass lines, floor tom and crash heavy drums with the song culminating in what I can only describe as the love child of former singles ‘Dead Star’ and ‘Assassin’.

‘I Belong To You (+Mon Coeur S’ouvre A Ta Voix)’ is an interesting and upbeat little number that I can’t possibly find the words to describe and so will refrain, not unlike the actual song lyrics. The ‘Mon Coeur S’ouvre A Ta Voix’ part of the song I believe is interpretation of an Aria by Maria Callas and fits in the song as an extended middle eight. Undoubtedly an album highlight.

The remaining three songs are the ‘Exogenesis: Symphony’ Parts 1, 2 & 3. These would take days to dissect and pages to explain so I’ll leave them for the reader to discover the beauty for themselves. All in all I’m the furthest thing from disappointed, it’s a strong and diverse album. The only thing on my mind is why I couldn’t find some of those mad ass bass lines we’ve come to expect from Chris Wolstenholme. I believe Chris did suffer repetitive strain injury during the recording of the album so I figure they must be hiding somewhere there below the surface.

The Resistance is released 14th September 2009 (UK)  15th September 2009 (US)

‘Uprising’ is available now for download from the Nokia Music Store