Muse and the Resistance

The Devon rockers' new album is a mix of Goldfrapp, glam rock, Queen, Chopin, Lizst, R&B and includes a 16-minute three-part symphony. Bassist Chris Wolstenholme tells VICKI ANDERSON about The Resistance.

Arguably one of the best live acts in the world, Muse - Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard - formed in Teignmouth, Devon, when they got together as 16-year-olds. All those years ago they left their plastering jobs and took a gamble on music.

Now they play to packed-out stadiums - a recent tour announcement saw them sell out 95,000 seats in minutes.

On the eve of a hometown gig in Devon, bassist Wolstenholme is surprisingly nervous. A decade on from their debut album and conquering the world's stage, the group are preparing for their first live show in over a year in front of a home crowd.

"I'm very nervous about it. I will recognise a lot of faces in the crowd. You have to get a little bit nervous - it's what keeps you going, playing with that energy. It is quite scary, your fitness levels go down so it takes a while to get gig fitness back again."

If music is the voice of each generation, then Bellamy should be considered the mouthpiece of the conspiracy theorists, or factualists as he'd have them known.

The Resistance is the follow-up to 2006's Black Holes and Revelations and while at first glance the cover image for The Resistance doesn't seem as space cadetish, the group are roaming a galaxy of sounds from Chopin to Goldfrapp and exploring themes which involve mind-control by the CIA in the 1950s.

The first single, Uprising, is out now and the song United States of Eurasia is available for download along with Collateral Damage at the official Muse website.

Project Eurasia saw Muse fans worldwide hunting the song as USB keys with song data were hidden in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York.

Each of the first six USB flash drives contained 1/6 of the song, which was uploaded to the Muse website once it was found. Until the last New York flash drive was found, users could only listen to the song on the site and were unable to download it. After the data from the New York flash drive was uploaded, the song was made available as a free download.

The Resistance is a remarkable step forward for the group, who produced it themselves in a studio they built themselves.

"It has turned out well, we're really pleased with it. Producing it ourselves gave us more time to experiment and gave us more freedom, really," says Wolstenholme.

"It had a big impact on it. We didn't feel as if we had to please a producer, we just had to please ourselves, really, which made things a lot easier."

Close to Lake Como in northern Italy in their own studio, the group were able to take their time.

"It's something we've talked about doing for a while. With each album we've become more and more confident in our abilities in the studio and it seemed like the right time to try and do it ourselves. As soon as you go to someone else's studio, you're kind of up against it from the start. It's not very nice working to a deadline.

"Having our own studio meant we didn't have to kill ourselves. We could record for a week at a time and then stay home for a week without having to worry about studio bills. It's good to record in a more lax environment because it gives you a better perspective on the music."

Wolstenholme says that the group covered a lot of different areas on The Resistance and that there is nothing musically similar from song to song.

"What we've done is look at the areas of music we've not done before and touched on things we have done before that are more extreme. The album feels new to us and we feel as if we've challenged ourselves. It's boring when you do something you already know you can do.

"The first track, Uprising, is very influenced by glam rock, very Gary Glitterish with a bit of Goldfrapp, and then Undisclosed Desires which is very electronic with contemporary r 'n' b and sounds a bit like Timbaland, and then you've got the song at the end which is a three-part symphony, with a strong classical influence."

Trust Muse to attempt a classical three-part symphony. If anyone can make it work, it is this trio of beings from another musical planet.

Exogenesis is in three parts and is about 16 minutes long - Symphony Part I (Overture), Part II (Cross-Pollination) and Part III (Redemption).

"If I'm honest my initial response was to be a little bit freaked out by it," laughs Wolstenholme.

"Matt played it all on the piano, these random bits. I didn't understand it. Me and Dom had to put a lot of trust in Matt with that song. He had a definite vision of what he thought that song would be and we just had to go along with it really. It was difficult to even imagine it as a song.

"It wasn't until I went into the studio and listened to all three parts in a row that I understood what was going on. Now it's probably one of my favourite tracks on the whole album."

He adds that on their last two albums lyrical themes have been quite strong but believes on The Resistance they "jump around" a bit.

"There's some stuff that is pretty political, some songs talk about mind control then you have the symphony which talks about the human race not having come from Earth and moving on to another planet in the future. It's quite random but there is something underlying which holds it all together."

Any chance Muse will be rocking our part of the world soon? "We definitely will come to New Zealand but it will probably be next year. I imagine in the first half of the year."

Muse's album, The Resistance, is out now.