Muse, one of the UKs most innovative bands, are back with new their supersonic new single Supermassive Black Hole on June 19th followed by brand new album, Black Holes And Revelations on July 3rd. They also headline the Carling Weekend: Reading and Leeds Festival this year. Evidently, as this is Muse's first single since the release of Butterflies and Hurricanes in September 2004, we thought it would be downright rude not to catch up with one of the most awesome and eclectic bands around for a chinwag.
So, I Like Music had a chat with Muse drummer, Dominic Howard about the new material, the Muse music-making process, headlining Carling Weekend a decade after first dreaming about it, and the state of the music industry.
"I like music because… it makes me feel the most free I've ever felt in my entire life and gives me the freedom to do anything without much consequence."
DOM, MUSE
ILM: Black Holes And Revelations is released on 3rd July 2006 - a real eclectic mix and fusion of styles, from the edgy electro metal of Supermassive Black Hole, and funky Starlight to classic Muse with Take A Bow. Which track did you have the most fun making in the studio?
DOM: Lots for different reasons. I guess Knights Of Cydonia was a bit of a fun. It took us a while to really kind of hone the direction of that, but once we started drawing quite an influence from lots of Southern Italian music, and particularly like Enyo Moriconi, who made a lot of Spaghetti Western films, so that really took quite an impact on that song. So once we started drawing on those influences it was quite fun to try to make that song as visual as possible, to emphasise these elements and that kind of influence. And once that song started to come together it kept making us laugh how filmic it was, and how it just made you picture people on horses riding around on Mars or something like that, which was quite interesting.
And Supermassive Black Hole was cool as well, because that was something that really felt like we were musically moving forward for our band. We took a lot of time and experimentation with programming drums and using real drums and messing around with lots of synths for a long time to really get that where to we wanted it to be.
So, I Like Music had a chat with Muse drummer, Dominic Howard about the new material, the Muse music-making process, headlining Carling Weekend a decade after first dreaming about it, and the state of the music industry.
"I like music because… it makes me feel the most free I've ever felt in my entire life and gives me the freedom to do anything without much consequence."
DOM, MUSE
ILM: Black Holes And Revelations is released on 3rd July 2006 - a real eclectic mix and fusion of styles, from the edgy electro metal of Supermassive Black Hole, and funky Starlight to classic Muse with Take A Bow. Which track did you have the most fun making in the studio?
DOM: Lots for different reasons. I guess Knights Of Cydonia was a bit of a fun. It took us a while to really kind of hone the direction of that, but once we started drawing quite an influence from lots of Southern Italian music, and particularly like Enyo Moriconi, who made a lot of Spaghetti Western films, so that really took quite an impact on that song. So once we started drawing on those influences it was quite fun to try to make that song as visual as possible, to emphasise these elements and that kind of influence. And once that song started to come together it kept making us laugh how filmic it was, and how it just made you picture people on horses riding around on Mars or something like that, which was quite interesting.
And Supermassive Black Hole was cool as well, because that was something that really felt like we were musically moving forward for our band. We took a lot of time and experimentation with programming drums and using real drums and messing around with lots of synths for a long time to really get that where to we wanted it to be.
