Zéguth, interview par Oor

Steve Lamacq n'a pas diffusé la chanson 'Time is running out' ce soir sur Radio 1, mais devrait le faire prochainement. Par contre la chanson 'Endlessly' a été diffusée sur Rtl2 par Zégut dans 'Pop Rock station'.

Voici un article paru dans OOR, une interview lorsque le groupe était à Los Angeles :

At the moment Muse are finishing off tracks for their third album together with Rich Costey. Costey let me hear five of their still untitled songs, he's as excited as a little child.

''You want it really really loud??'' Costey : Not necessary, the first two tracks are two typical Muse songs : Matthew Bellamy with his high vibrating voice, singing as high as he possibly can, together with pompous piano sounds and melodic guitar with some really decent pieces of bass and drum work. The new songs are a little louder than we're used to. Especially the opening track is fast, loud and sounds really agressive. Theres also a song with violins which might make you think of Philip Glass. Remarkable thing : In the middle of a song there's a moment of silence and a true piano solo starts. ''You gotta have guts for that'' says Costey proudly. It definately means something when a man like Rich Costey says that, a man who already worked with Aphex Twin, Fiona Apple, Sebadoh, Philip Glass, Ice Cube and The Mars Volta. Ten years ago this new Muse stuff probably would have been called metal, maybe they still would.

''What's wrong with this sound??'' replies Costey shocked. Of course, it's got to be put on cd and stuff, but that doesnt mean the songs are gonna be smoother. Even though the record company would like to see that. Costey means a lot to the new album, he wanted everything to be done like he wanted to, the muse guys accepted that. Costey: ''It's very very important to get the best out of an artist, during recording i would let them play a part of music ten times if i had to''. Even though they would get sick of me! There are the muse Lads. The skinny Matthew Bellamy, with black spikey hair and the typical ''boys next door'': Dominic Howard (drums) and Chris Wolstenholme (bass). The guys are a bit hungry, ''I want a vegetarian salad'' says Matt, while he's looking at a menu card of a restaurant. The Waiter says they don't have them anymore and gives him another card with other possible choices. Finally the waiter comes out of the kitchen with four white boxes : three royal salads with meet and for Matt some grass with some bright pink sauce on it, obviously not for the first time. ''Being a vegetarian in America is impossible, you see!?'' What a country........, you can see him thinking. '''We've already been here before, but we didn't tour here yet, it was just for promoting our debut album. America isn't our priority, the only reason we are here is because Rich likes working in the studio here.'' This is certainly not their ''American record”. “The most of it is recorded and written in England. We've hardly been out. Meanwhile we're standing outside the building. Dom poses against the wall, pretending to be really cool, watching all the ladies. Chris is sitting there like a little child on an adult birthday party. Bellamy, like always, does the talking. ''This record is so loud because we had to let something out'' he explains. I'm not really into politics, but you can't ignore it any longer these days, all those big problems in the world.'' I thought we could do that now. “

About what are you singing?
“ About not being able to do anything about the problems in this world. It's not really serious though, it's rather like piss off others and stuff.”

What about the fact that you’re from England? Does it mean you support the war?
It's very embarassing, I understand Blair though. He's trying to maintain the relationship between Europe and America, or I'd better say improving. But it's just making me sick how Blair's acting like Bush's little slave. That's what I mean with piss off others. Particularly how I think about religious people ehhhhh.....are you religious?
No, go on my son.
When you see, like a not religious person, how the world leaders are handling. Bush with his God bless America, Allah on the other side. These people are extremistics who are destroying this world. And we can only watch it and think: What's this all about!? As long as religion is in charge this world will have big problems. It's not that i'm against religion, but it should be seperated from politics. I don't really see this happening, you?

Should all not religious people stand up ans say : cut the crap?!
Something has to change definately. Humanity is getting unhappier and the people or getting more and more ignorant. More and more crimes are being comitted, but, I mean to say....We've been talking to some people from LA. Unbelievable, the stupidity of those people! The ignorance! Just unbelievable. Matt is talking with his heart and soul at the moment. Chris and Dom are laughing their asses of cause of the expression on Matt's face. Matt stays serious. The worst is that Europe just think it's ok what America are doing. If we want it to change, it'll have to start here, in America. But at the moment it's only getting worse and worse. When you see that Blair's in the middle, he's not extreme right, imagine what really extreme right people are like. Everything's going to the conservatives at the moment who are really a lot worse. The best is to just go home and live a nice life for as long as it's possible.

Haven’t you got the feeling you can change things about it, being a celebrity?
'Everybody's saying that, just let someone else do it. I'm just a stupid kid who makes records and does gigs, why would you give that any political attention? Just look at what Madonna's doing. She's talking all kinds of rubbish about the war and gets loads of attention with that, even more attention than other people in politic, who know a lot more about it, have much more experience in it with a good opinion about it and maybe even a possible solution. That's very very bad, that's why I think I'd better keep my mouth shut about it.''

But you always have your own opinion about things, like about religion, aren’t you afraid you ‘re offending religious fans?
''Nahh....Look, I'm not actually against religion, but the people who are in charge shouldn't use their religion as an excuse for the horrible things they did and the worst about it is that they can just do it, nobody stops them. If i were a Christian i would see it as my duty to kill George Bush”. Chris laughing from behind his cool sun glasses: ''There you got your statement for your article hahaha''. Dominic: ''Bye bye nice carreer in America, *sigh*

Apart from the lyrics, th emusic sounds aggressive as well.
''That's just the way it is, like the first song of the album is a song with a militrary marche drum in it and some strong piano sounds. You can't escape from it, it just happens. It represents the world we're living in right now. The fact that our record is sounding very agressive has to do with rich's work on it. I like it. We'd stay like this if you asked me. We're heavier than we ever sounded. We decided to be more open to other people's ideas about music. It has to do with our decision to stay a trio. There was a time we were thinking about a fourth Muse member. It's still not an exception, we still might do it, but it would have to be someone who we just meet, I don't want to place advertisement in the NME.''

But there is a need for a new member?
''When you're with four or five people everything's a little more laid back and you can progress in a broad way if you know what I mean. When you're with three people you can only progress in depth, so you can only develope yourself to a better musician. That means you have to learn a lot and revise a lot.''

And you guys are doing that?
''Yeah, we recorded some demo's and talked about them very much, asking each other things like: why's the one better than the other? What are we going to put together? We also studied the past. There are two ways of making music : You can come up with something totally new and refreshing or you can work on already excisting concepts, try to make it better and add things to it. The first thing is really difficult to do, actually that's only possible with making new sounds with computers. The second way is just correcting things. Actually there's also a third option which is doin a little of both, Radiohead's Kid A is a good example of that. That's what we are doing, looking at the past and trying to make progress.''

You also look at what’s happening around you right now? There are things like news rawk and electroclash for exemple.
''Electroclash? I've heard of it yeah. A lot of sounds make me think of the past, music I used to hear on the radio. I think it's quite good : very simple, but very effective.''

About the past : Did queen affect your sound?
''No, that's what happened later, people of the press started comparing us to Queen. Of course we knew their hits, but we understood the comparison when started listening to their older work.''

Your new work makes me think of their LP “Queen 2”. Also of sad wings or destiny from judas priest.
''Judas Pries!?!?''

They made music with high voices acoustic guitars and piano too. Just like you do.
''We didn't grow up with music from the seventies, we are too young for that. We grew up with music from the late eighties and begin ninetees. You notice that everything has it's origin. Like before there was Primus there was a great band called Rush. You would think that The Smashing Pumpkins make really original music....until you discover My Bloody Valentine. You get interested in that later. When we were adolescents we listened to Sonic Youth and Pixies.''

And before that?
''erm.....Ned's Atomic Dustbin.

That’s just Hor-ri-ble!!!
” I know I know, but ehhh, I was just a little child!”

That’s a lame excuse.
''Yeah it is actually. I know it's really horrible, sorry. But about the past again. Muse are going a little further back in time. You heard the song with the piano solo? You can hear it affected by music from the beginning of the twentiest century, but we added some modern bass and drums to it.''

I just wanted to say that.
''Look, when it's about classical music everybody starts mentioning Bach. That man was a genious, he thought of a new system which is the base of most songs we are listening to these days. That's what I mean. But his music? No, it's so boring. I'm rather interested in the period when the classical music started to become the pop music we know.''

People usually put you in the same category as Radiohead, Coldplay and, i’m very to say this, Starsailor, what do you think about that?
''The thing we got in common is that we're all bands from England who try to make something new. Coldplay focus on sixtiespsychedelica, Radiohead focus themselves on new wave and no wave and we focus ourselves on good arranged rock songs from the seventies, I see you're not too keen on starsailor, am I right?''

I also don’t like Coldplay, I don’t even like Muse.
''Could you explain why not?''

I think that all of you guys go a little over the top. Your songs are so complicated, you are almost suffocating in your own songs.
''When we were making Origin of Symmetry, our second album, we did really too much of conceptualizing. We lost ourselves in Queen-alike bombast. Wicked shows, loads of arrangements. We were getting loads of new ideas every time. Now we know that it's special to have the ability to put all those ideas in a song of three or four minutes. I couldn't think of people who'd only like to listen to songs of seven minutes or more!''

I've got to say, I like your new songs. Rock from the seventies with influences from now. I was very surprised anyway. The last time we were talking you told me the album would be more like Nina Somone’s style.
''Did I!?!?!hahahahaha!! me!? I can't remember that! I think what I meant to say is that there would be more piano stuff on the new album.''

There was a story that Hullabaloo would be the ending of a period, th eperiod of bombast. Muse would go and sound more loke the cover version of feeling good.
''Hmmmm...I don't know which of our new song you heard. Maybe only the loud ones? There are also songs with violins and piano. Even some jazzy parts, but I wouldn’t compare them to Nina Simone.''

So she died for nothing?
''Yeah, we let her down, unfortunately''