LoganMH
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It's very cinematic, but much too futuristic sounding for GoT in my opinion. My early guess is that it might be for The Twilight Zone reboot, which is premiering on CBS on April 1st Trailer music doesn't sound a million miles away from Muse's song either ...
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I put in the first vote for Pressure ! It's strange. I certainly don't hate the song as a standalone and know I'll enjoy it live, but it does the Psycho thing of repeating for a minute and a half longer than it needs to, and I sometimes find that worse than a song that has elements I'm not keen on that disappears more quickly (or seems to). It's to the point that I think Pressure disrupts the flow of the album for me where comically (compared to what I expected going in), even tracks like Dig Down don't. I reserve the right to take this back after future listens, of course
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Also not in order: 1 The Handler 2 MK Ultra 3 Unnatural Selection (live) 4 Animals (live) 5 Survival (possibly, somehow?!!!) (honourable mentions: USoE, Isolated System, Algorithm, The Dark Side, Break It To Me, The Void [Acoustic]) 1 Aftermath 2 Revolt 3 Save Me 4 Liquid State 5 Psycho - as much as I’d get into the spirit of it live ... (dishonourable mentions: The Globalist [would’ve been on instead of Psycho, but I don’t mind some of the sections separately], Mercy, Explorers) Doesn’t look quite right to me somehow, but I’ll commit to it for now. Despite no ST tracks breaking the top 5, I prefer it as a whole album over T2L and Drones and found it more fun than The Resistance
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Comparing to post-BHAR releases only - I’m expecting to prefer the new album to Drones, but there’s no guarantee past that point. It’d probably only take another good song and no major fall off in quality to beat out the couple of highlights from The 2nd Law for me, but am prepared for it to fall short of The Resistance. Will be very interesting to see what the non-single material turns out like!
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The clip sounds great to me - reminds me of moody, History-era Michael Jackson (more than anything Timbaland achieved on Xscape, weirdly), but with a crazy hook at the end. The reaction should be interesting if it's released as the next single or gets a video - I expect some people are going to detest it ! I'm curious to hear how it fits on the album. The other tracks seem to complement each other well production-wise, but this one sounds like it could stand out quite a lot (especially after Pressure on the tracklist). Perhaps some of the hook's weirdness might need to return in a later track on the CD to balance things out a bit ?
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Any chance of a pm guys ?
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Easily better than everything except The Handler on Drones for me (that's a fairly low bar, admittedly) - but possibly also the best genuine attempt at trying to *evolve* their sound since Black Holes. Algorithm into this and Pressure sounds like a pretty interesting start to an album to me! Will be curious to see the track length of The Void. Only bought the standard editions of albums in the past but have taken a punt on the super deluxe package this time because of the extra remixes providing more value for money - fingers crossed
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Dig Down into The Void could be a great choice. I always felt the best way to use that song would be as a penultimate track or near enough. It might work better as the last rally before the climax ...
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I think the new songs are okay so far (crowd whoops aside), and it would probably only take the rest to maintain the same quality/not involve a stunt guest producer or second vocalist for me to enjoy the album more than T2L and Drones. That probably says more about how low I consider the hurdle to be more than anything, but there you go I'm conscious that I don't want to overplay the importance of Rich Costey being back on board as a co-producer just yet (the pros/cons have been discussed elsewhere), but I think it might just help avoid a couple of the things that plagued the backend of the last two albums and keep the songs feeling a bit better glued together/streamlined. If not, that'll be too bad, but I'm cautiously optimistic at the moment. I'm glad the colourful sounds and aesthetics are back, and that the piano is going to be more involved again. I think it's going to be quite entertaining overall. It feels strange to say that based on my relatively lukewarm reaction to all 3 of the songs we've heard so far on a standalone basis (and massive problems with the last two albums), but I don't feel too negatively for some reason. Just as long as they haven't been forcing things too much with the heavier stuff. I agree that the "alternate versions" are a particularly interesting prospect at this point (if only to see why they committed to the idea!). So fingers crossed, for now!
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I'm getting a real sense of deja vu with this project. Overproduced, cringeworthy songs about politics and life on the road, followed by heartfelt acoustic versions to show off catchy songwriting prowess. Hmmmmmm. Got it ! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDi-8dWYGB0#t=01m23s
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I guess this reflects their intention to do a stream/download only and not put out a DVD/Blu Ray release. An intentional 4.0 mix to give an "all-encompassing, in the round concert feel" wouldn't be good enough to justify purchase for many when it's so far behind accepted home theater standards (5.1, 7.1 etc). On a fairly cheap download they can just provide a basic stereo mix and be done with it. Their next full scale live release will probably be aiming for better visual/audio fidelity than Rome - I guess this is just a stop-gap EDIT: Have just seen Marc Carolan's instagram post about the hard work put into the mix. Perhaps he decided to take a more experimental approach after the physical release was ruled out? It seems to have worked better for some than others ...
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I'm getting more of a late 90s straight-to-video Disney sequel feel with those vocal harmonies and the percussion - very Lion King I think I can hear some gospel-esque church organ underneath too, so will be interested to hear how all of the elements come together. If nothing else, I'm glad the album sounds like it's going to be colourful and diverse again. After The 2nd Law I wasn't sure that's what I wanted from the band anymore, but the greys and browns of Drones made me realise I did, I just wanted it done better.
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Just quickly on this - that's a very good point, and I must say I forgot Matt went to such lengths to 'clarify' haha. At the time I remember thinking he was probably telling porkies about the single market I expect I'd disagree with him on a lot of things, but he's entitled to his opinions (or, to keep them to himself, if he'd prefer), and the Matt-Brexit/Scottish independence thing was very much an "of course he did :rolleyes:" moment for me!
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It’s tricky. I mean, “what are you willing and not willing to compromise to get what you want” is the important question, exactly as you say, when looking at the bigger picture. But I think there’s a growing tendency for people to conflate separate political events based on perceived trends, and extrapolate similarities without acknowledging the various cultural nuances that make them different. It’s something I feel quite strongly about whenever I see people making comparisons between Brexit and Trump. The assumption often seems to be that because a person can trace some general parallels in attitude, or identify how one political result might plausibly have contributed to the momentum of the other in some way, that they’re inextricably linked, and that the mentality underpinning both is similar. I don’t think it’s that straightforward - not in a lot of cases, anyway, despite what outspoken protesters/commentators would have you believe. Of course, Nigel Farage cosying up to Trump didn’t help the optics (), but while Farage was instrumental in prompting the referendum, he was a fairly marginal figure when it came to actual campaigns for and against the UK staying in the EU. A substantial number of people from both sides of the political divide over here had wanted to ‘leave’ for some time, with every intention to maintain very positive, mutually beneficial relationships with neighbouring countries in Europe (and fight to protect the rights of all people living over here at the time of the vote). The thing is, the EU was initially sold as a trading bloc in the 1950s (practical and sensible), but evolved into the political organisation it is today (seeking “ever closer union”) against a lot of people’s wishes. Possibly due to laziness, many weren't sufficiently engaged until - in their minds - it seemed too late to affect any sort of meaningful change (and all UK governments seemed unwilling to really push for it, in any case). Perhaps it’d be a bit like if the US, Mexico and Canada signed some sort of trade agreement, added a bit about free movement of people, and then slowly started shifting powers from their individual governments to the greater whole. When the going got tough, some people would want to cut their losses. I mean, literally the day before the referendum, a former President of the European Commission was calling for the establishment of a European Army - that sort of thing spooked people, I think ... On the immigration issue, not every person who voted to leave necessarily thought “we want less people coming into our country” so much as “we want the people in the UK to feel like they have a direct say, one way or another, when they vote for their preferred parties during elections - rather than be forced to follow quotas set from the outside”. Restoring parliamentary sovereignty/moving closer toward Matt’s “direct democracy” ideal was the main impetus for many, not just the cover-up story for some sort of mass racist/anti-immigration sentiment. Many understood that the UK economy would take a hit in the short term (at least), and thought it was a price worth paying. Many others, sadly, will have felt the squeeze, and the lack of any sort of coherent Brexit vision in the aftermath will continue to raise questions about whether it would have just been better to wait for the rest of the continent to agree drastic reform was necessary from within (there was clear unrest in France, now Italy, and there’ll be more to come). But it wasn’t going to be neat whatever happened, truthfully - and there was a real sense, reinforced by comments by the UK government and EU itself, that this might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (for better or worse). There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle with this sort of thing. And in fairness, I thought there were plenty of reasonable, impassioned debates where speakers on both sides of the Brexit issue came across well. Some people were unsure how they were going to vote right up until the day of the referendum. And, there was some disgusting racism - absolutely. No apologies are being made for that. But the tenor of the argument was, for the most part, quite different from all things Trump. As I understand it, anyway. I’ve probably talked around the houses a bit here without adding much. I’m just wary of the UK and US political situations being compared too closely. It’s often said that both of our viable parties in the UK are to the Left of the Republicans and Democrats in the US (both are overwhelmingly in favour of extreme gun control, are pro-choice etc.). And as much as some people might be found over here moaning “I wish we had someone like Trump over here to negotiate our Brexit” (which many people would be horrified by), there are just so many differences. Frankly, I don’t feel qualified to start unpicking the Trump issue (and related ideologies), as much as I’ve been following as an outsider - there’s just so much to cover, and the US is so much bigger ! But I honestly think it’s Matt’s complete feeling of alienation from what he’s witnessing in the US (as a very English guy who probably only lives there because of his wealth/privilege/relationship) that prompts some of his more irreverent comments. Not that it’s an excuse, really. I think we more or less agree on that ! I saw an interview recently (might have been a fairly old one?) where Matt was deflecting from some US issue or other with “but er … yeah, big fan of the constitution haha” as if he was fully aware he’s just bluffing/going through the motions/doesn't really know what he's talking about. None of which would notice half as much if he didn’t insist on making all the political references in his lyrics to begin with !!
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Matt’s stated positions on Brexit and Scottish Independence were entirely inkeeping with comments he'd made about the appeal of direct democracy, decentralisation of power etc. - there are many people with similar concerns who don’t have racist sympathies. It would’ve been much more surprising to me if he’d expressed support the other way. Saying that, if I started making "final solution" references in my latest song, I'd expect to be grilled in interviews and have a more serious response prepared
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Haha quite! I almost ended my post with that exact disclaimer
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At this point, the conversation has become much more to do with Matt’s irreverent public attitude in promo interviews etc. than the actual lyrics of Thought Contagion. There isn’t a specific implication in the song that if you turn off the news you might find the world more bearable. It seems to be a much more general comment on “the spread of dangerous ideas”, as mentioned on Absolute Radio. Matt even seemed to acknowledge (in passing) that he’d struggled to find as neat an explanation in previous interviews - and I’d agree with others that he was a little careless. Matt’s always been pretty vague and taken a scattershot approach to these sorts of subject, though. It’s likely that if he was pushed for more detail on the source of whatever “dangerous ideas” he’s discussing, he’d include agenda-driven figures in the public sphere, politicians, preachers, conspiracy theorists … right the way through to some of the individuals we encounter in everyday life - abusive personalities, ‘emotional vampires’ and so on. It’s about corruptibility - the extent to which we’re susceptible to paranoia, neurosis and faulty thinking, as far as I can tell. Any instance where a person becomes conscious of creeping thoughts and doubts sown by others - adopting dumbed-down theories as their own, getting drawn into toxic language games - repeating and spreading popular jargon, psychobabble and invented phrases (i.e. “thought contagion” itself and some of the others I’ve used in this message ). I'm not necessarily defending all of the lyrics - just trying to make a distinction!
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I certainly don’t love the song (and would rather never hear crowd-style vocals on a Muse studio track ever again), but think it might be the best post-BHAR single at capturing an essence of what I enjoy about the band. Of course, that possibly says more about my lukewarm relationship with their recent radio output than anything else Most of those I find okay in context, but wouldn’t make a favourites list and aren’t the sorts of thing I’d care to see again live, for example (early performances of Madness and Survival excepted, perhaps, for other reasons). I’m quite happy they’re returning to their one-song-at-a-time approach for this album – a dynamic and colourful 10 song tracklist that avoids a huge drop-off in quality would be an appealing prospect. Not expecting a return to the glory days in terms of consistency of quality, but staying cautiously optimistic for now !
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I understand the mixed response and relate to some of the aspects people aren’t finding to their taste. I don’t feel like the Fury comparison was inaccurate, though. It wouldn’t even have seemed completely bizarre to me if Matt had compared the song with Futurism in the same interview – he just didn’t mention the arena-rock-singalong-style backing vocals, which change everything/shift focus from the ‘slow, dark groove’ or whatever !! I’d generally rather Muse studio recordings be free of most OI, HEY or WHOA vocalisations, because it usually breaks any sense of immersion for me - I start thinking “well, this is the crowd participation bit. This would be enjoyable for the band to hear chanted back at them, I guess. Good for concerts … mm, I’m not at a concert ...”. There’s something that can seem a little calculating, like the band don’t have enough faith that people are going to notice how catchy the hook is (in this case) or that Matt’s attempts to get the crowd involved will fall flat on their face if it hasn’t been spelled out in advance “this is the bit YOU come in” on the studio version ... Saying that, in many ways I think Thought Contagion is exactly the sort of single the band need to release from time to time. It has lots of little touches that might make it more accessible for mainstream audiences – the most simple of Muse-y chord sequences, the sort of simple but effective riff that guitar/bass players of any level can work out in their bedrooms, a repetitive, earworm-y hook – even some hip-hop/trap beat influence in the verses and whatever else that makes it feel like the band are at least trying to move their sound forward a bit. Meanwhile, they’ve kept aspects of their musical identity in tact very well (unlike in some of their other recent offerings) – to me it really doesn’t sound like any other band. It sounds VERY much like a Muse song, just one that incorporates a gimmicky singalong bit that I’m not personally so fond of I’ve never been the biggest fan of Time is Running Out for similar reasons (though I appreciate the production style wasn't quite as in-your-face on that one), but that’s been a very successful gateway song for them. I agree with people who think it’s going to work well live. It shouldn’t be too vocally demanding (and isn’t teetering right at the edge of Matt’s range), and the music should definitely sound a lot meatier/heavy through their gig setup. If a certain number of setlist slots have to be gobbled up by newer singles, I don't think I'd be too unhappy when this one came on. Of course, all opinions subject to change ... I'll see how it grows on me (or doesn't)!
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It's no problem, we can agree to disagree It was the first thing I responded to when I heard the vocals on the song, and I've been baffled by it ever since. If I thought it was just a ropey bit of singing it'd be much easier for me to process in a way, as I wouldn't be having to try and rationalise to myself how completely bizarre and unnecessary such a decision seems (I can only imagine it has something to do with definition and "tightness" on a very pedantic scale)! There's another comparable instance on the word "puppeteer" in Mercy (very specifically in the foreground vocal track) that I'm sure most people will hear as odd intonation or something, but I'm convinced is clumsy application of a vocal tuning/time-stretching plugin designed to add definition to the individual syllables ... I could be completely wrong, of course !! I don't think I am, but if it was clear beyond a shadow of a doubt in isolated vocal tracks, I'd be more than happy to say so (I don't think we'll ever get to hear them, one way or another )! To add some perspective, I haven't noticed anything like this on previous Muse studio albums (except on the word "reached" in "now I have finally reached the end" on the Rome DVD performance of Madness haha - but we already know they were happy to tamper with a detail or two on that release), so it's not like I'm going around imagining it everywhere - just a few places on Drones, I guess Oh, I'm sure you're right - I'm muddling the jargon! I mean as in cutting and pasting, punching in and out, or however you want to describe the process of deleting a single line out of a vocal track and trying to seamlessly "dub" in another. It's amazing how bad I am at describing things I'm regularly messing around with in my spare time ... an amateur's prerogative (I hope !) Whatever the case, I'm hoping there'll be no funny business on the new track!
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It's weird, isn't it? I wondered whether it might be a jokey affectation (in a song that otherwise plays it straight?), but whatever the case, it sounds horrible to me ! Mm, I can imagine a version where it does work, certainly But when I think of flow I'm not just thinking of energy and length but something about the balance of instruments too that I can't quite put into words. There might have been something that wasn't quite working with Chris's increased prominence for the first verse directly after Assassin's big wall-of-sound. Beef up the bass to compensate and then you have to figure out how to get the balance between guitar/bass right for the bridge/chorus without having to turn up *everything*. As a standalone, I think I slightly prefer the dynamics and intensity of the live arrangement, but I expect there might have been things that made it slightly trickier to stick with it in the studio. Maybe not, though. Could just have been a dodgy decision haha! I do agree about Crying Shame, but I'd be interested to know whether the band actually had a space in mind for it to occupy on the album when they finished it up (as that could, again, go some way to explaining decisions about the arrangement). I mean this is all hypothetical, of course - it's obviously possible that there are versions of the songs hanging around that we'd both have preferred a great deal in and out of context, on every level of production I'd be interested to know if the band are thinking of working with lots of different producers on their new tracks or if they're starting to get a sense of where they want to head with the LP/who they might want to involve?
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Sorry, it felt vague/unclear as I was writing it I don't know the correct terminology to describe the features of Melodyne, Newtone and other vocal fine-tuning tools off the top of my head, but it's definitely been clumsily processed by something like that (whether to correct/modulate the pitch of the original take in some way or adjust the length/tightness of the words, I'm not sure), resulting in that sort of stuttering, inhuman sound in Aftermath's first line. Normally this sort of alteration is done subtly enough that it doesn't notice, but if the effects are overdone (often just a case of turning an adjustment knob too far up or down), the voice starts sounding unnatural and robotic. Without boring everyone with example videos or brushing up on the specifics I probably won't be able to back myself up too well, but have no doubt this is what happened to that opening line (I've messed around with similar on a much more amateurish level). There's bound to be someone hiding away here who knows much more about audio engineering/vocal-editing who'd do a better job of explaining - maybe something for a separate thread ! What I was meaning with the overdub comment is that if there was something about that line that didn't quite sound right in the original vocal take (and they didn't want to do another full runthrough), it shouldn't have taken long to re-record the line by itself. Not ideal to be cutting and pasting if you're wanting a 100% genuine performance, but neither's the vocal processing they went with instead ! None of it would be anywhere near as strange if we don't already know that Matt's perfectly capable of recording vocals without any studio trickery! Well, for example, that I think the length of BHAR is about right as it is, without the Grand Omega Bosses breakdown in Assassin (as much as I'm happy that I can listen to that version separately). I think Assassin being shorter adds to the power of City of Delusion and KoC, and keeps the album feeling tighter as a whole in its latter half. I like the live 2005 version of Exopolitics, but don't know if that arrangement would work so well for the flow of the album, either. It might do! But I expect the band and Rich Costey had valid reasons for deciding otherwise which I might agree with if I heard both possible versions back-to-back. Sometimes what seems like it'd work best for a song on a standalone basis won't necessarily work best for the song as part of a whole album (whether it be something about the balance of instruments in comparison to the tracks before and after, the overall flow, emotional peaks and troughs or whatever else). Take the combination of approaches on The 2nd Law for example - Matt said each of those tracks were produced in whatever way suited the individual songs and compiled together later, rather than approached as a collection of tracks that comprise a whole. For me, it ended up feeling like an unbalanced mish-mash (not at all helped by the track order, mind you). Sorry - I didn't mean to derail things so much here, but appreciate my original post was a bit weird
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Well, the first line of Aftermath ("war is all around") sounds heavily pitch corrected (or clumsily shortened using Melodyne or similar), which would explain why it sounds so unnatural (one of about three bizarre instances across Drones). The fact that it's so easy to sing/would have taken no time at all to overdub is presumably what's stopping people from hearing/accepting it and presuming it was just a bad take they agreed to keep. I agree that the final line ("loneliness has gone") is also terrible, and that's where the "bad impression" comes in, as you say. I'm not keen on the arrangement/instrumentation in the song in general, so don't think those two lines being performed better would've made much difference for me, but I completely agree that they hurt it. It did sound like the band left Mutt to do his thing with the track based on interviews, so I expect he's partly responsible for how it ended up sounding. I think it's a fairly hopeful sign if Rich Costey is co-producing the new track. I felt his production on Absolution and Black Holes was mostly great as soon as I realised that he was probably responsible for a lot of the subtle, atmospheric touches and glue that have been missing from The Resistance onwards. Something about the mixing or mastering flattened the dynamics and didn't help though. I appreciate criticisms about how Exopolitics, Assassin etc. ended up losing something in their studio arrangements, but think it was in service of the album as a complete collection. I'll be very interested to hear what the song sounds like, anyway !
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The Handler = Lugia's Song >>> Most of Drones > Revolt > Aftermath
