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Muse Album Art Discussion Thread

LTmusefan

By LTmusefan
in Songs & Releases

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Carbo Escapee

Carbo

Posted
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Showbiz's album art relates to it's ongoing concept of love since that's practically what just about every song on the entire album is about. Angst, love, angst, love.

 

Origin of Symmetry is more complex I'd say. I cant say exactly what the big figures on the screen were but I always had the impression that they were tuning forks. One theory could be that it represents music since music as a whole is one big symmetry, the tuning forks generating frequency, hence the album art represents music in itself as an art form.

 

Absolution is as Dom said pretty much, people leaving or descending to earth. Up to interpretation. I always saw it more as descending but not that they came down to earth, more like absolute, religious beings blazing by slowly like meteor showers in slow motion as a sign. A warning.

 

Black Holes & Revelations, four horsemen of the apocalypse. This would arguabely fit more in with Absolution if anything at all what with Black Holes being more politically charged and into alien-life plus sci-fi. Then again said four horsemen are playing chess on Mars. If we ignore the KoC video, KoC itself might be just about the four horsemen rioting upon a vastly inhabited Mars and the album cover being pre-KoC.

 

The Resistance is like the album, a take it or leave it. Every song in the album speaks of some form of Resistance. Guiding Light does this, Unnatural Selection and Uprising does it, hell even Exogenesis does it. The way I see it, in The Resistance, the person on the long walk towards earth gets the choice of living a world on the outside, in the vast, endless possibilities; the colored tiles signifying everything has its fair chance of a difference, or continue living his perfect, predictable and safe, already good life on planet earth as it is. One or another has to go. Although in Exogenesis it gives cons to both worlds since the people saw the outside as their last chance to continue and spread their life, but they eventually realize that the reason that earth became what their current planet of inhabitant is most likely destined to be is cause of mankind's disruptive ways. It's all in human nature.

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Benit Escapee

Benit

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I know. Who would be able to think of that artwork from hearing the album names alone.

 

True that.

 

---

 

You may not like surrealist art, but you can't deny that Storm Thorgerson work is incredibly original and NO cliché at all. Just look at the work he has done for Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and Healing Sixes, just to name a few. Does any of them look like any other piece of art created before, overused for many years by many artists, to cal call it cliché?

 

If the work he has done for Muse (Absolution, Butterflies & Hurricanes, BH&R) is hideously cliché, I don't know what is an original album artwork then.

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Wingardium LevioSIA Escapee

Wingardium LevioSIA

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You may not like surrealist art, but you can't deny that Storm Thorgerson work is incredibly original and NO cliché at all. Just look at the work he has done for Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and Healing Sixes, just to name a few. Does any of them look like any other piece of art created before, overused for many years by many artists, to cal call it cliché?

 

The only issue I have with his art is that it looks like other pieces created by him. It's often really obvious that he's done it. But having said that, I quite like most of the stuff he's done.

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  • 3 months later...
MaGö1548180112 Escapee

MaGö1548180112

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I think The Resistance has two different interpretations:

 

1- It's a visual representation of the album; all the styles and genres are represented by the colors. The recurring theme of 'Resistance' is present both in the songs and the General Artwork

 

2- It's a representation of Exogenesis, in the way that the path the man must go through to save humanity will only lead to the start, or 'Earth', representing the idea that what happens in the song is just a big cycle and the humankind will have to go through it unless they change

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Dominic. Escapee

Dominic.

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OoS or TR are probably my favourite album artworks. Also, am I the only one that likes all the single artworks from a certain era (like absolution era, BH&R etc...) to be all similar, like all the BH&R single artworks were similar, all the OoS. Now they've ruined it with Uprising and UD which are completely different :p

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andrew1900 Escapee

andrew1900

Posted
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OoS or TR are probably my favourite album artworks. Also, am I the only one that likes all the single artworks from a certain era (like absolution era, BH&R etc...) to be all similar, like all the BH&R single artworks were similar, all the OoS. Now they've ruined it with Uprising and UD which are completely different :p

 

you're totally right! never thought of that. i wouldn't mind if all singles from the resistance followed the symmetric colorful shapes...

 

I think The Resistance has two different interpretations:

 

1- It's a visual representation of the album; all the styles and genres are represented by the colors. The recurring theme of 'Resistance' is present both in the songs and the General Artwork

 

2- It's a representation of Exogenesis, in the way that the path the man must go through to save humanity will only lead to the start, or 'Earth', representing the idea that what happens in the song is just a big cycle and the humankind will have to go through it unless they change

 

that's interesting. just like absolution, all about interpretations

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  • 5 months later...
xbroken_ideals Escapee

xbroken_ideals

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I read in a magazine, something about the TR cover art- The tesselation of hexagons being a futuristic representation of a womb, and the guy standing on the beam of light is on his way to inseminate the egg, which, funnily enough, happens to be the Earth. :wtf:

 

I think that, the little sillouette of the man, who appears frequently throughout the TR album booklet arkworks, is the subject of er, most of the songs on the album- Especially Exogenesis. Since the Earth is ahead of him, this could mean it's his responsibility, he has to save it. It certainly sounds something like that, according to Cross-Pollination. And the hexagons- Numerologically, hexagons represent union: This could be shown represent the governments.

 

God, I feel stupid :facepalm: But that's how I see it.

 

OoS- This is confusing me just as much as everyone else. But I always saw the electricity posts as symmetrical...That's all I know.

 

Absolution- It's lovely, it always had an eerie feeling about it, especially with that guy standing there. He's awesome :chuckle: Anyway, I always saw the shadows as souls chosen by God or something of that manner, since there is a lot to do with religion in this album.

 

Showbiz- I actually really, really like it. I always have. I think it might even be one of my favourites. Although I'm not sure if there is meant to be a meaning to it, or Matt and the designer just thought of it and slapped it up on photoshop? But whatever it is, it's clearly on a different planet, and the girl is scared out of her mind.

 

BH&R- I can tell by the tiny Earth in the sky and the red ground that these guys are on Mars. Cydonia, maybe? Maybe they are the Knights of Cydonia? It's an interesting idea, but I always saw these guys as a futuristic representation as the 5(?) Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Maybe that's what they were trying to convey, putting those toy horses on the table.

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bard4209 Escapee

bard4209

Posted
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1. The Resistance - Favorite for sure - would love to have this in large print for my wall. Like the concept of the different colours representing the fusion of music genres that make up the album.

I see the figure as a lone man, heading down a path that would bring all new ideas to earth.

 

2. Origin of Symmetry

3. Absolution

4. Black Holes and Revelations

5. Showbiz

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Tofu Escapee

Tofu

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I've no idea what the Origin of Symmetry is according to Michio Kaku, the author of the book the title was taken from, so it mightn't be the real interpretation, but that's how I see it. :LOL:

I did read the book, but instead of explaining it myself I'm gonna quote Matt's explanation of the whole origin of symmetry thing from the muse-official.com because it's so entertaining. :LOL:

so, thought of the day, . . . is , , , , , hmmmmmmmmm.....,..,..,,l;l,,

conciousness is what causes all matter to seek a higher state of order... the reason for

this is entropy (the fact that the universe is gradually dying and cooling) like there was once a big bang from a ten dimensionional sphere ,

fucking blew the lot into 6 and 4 dimensional spheres (we live in the 4 one) and when the electron surronded the nucleoueouos it

became concious and began seeking friends to bond with. eventually big old monster stars became a collective

of many smaller beings, thus the consiousness was passed to the higher state of order.

but then it blew up into supernova thing and born lots of new solars systems like the one we locate on.

but evey element in our body and surrounding land and surrounding solars used to be ultra connected

in a star ages ago, and we like wish we were back there.

what a load of shit.. i know

 

I read in a magazine, something about the TR cover art- The tesselation of hexagons being a futuristic representation of a womb, and the guy standing on the beam of light is on his way to inseminate the egg, which, funnily enough, happens to be the Earth. :wtf:

That makes sense, since exogenesis is about aliens traveling around and starting life on other planets or something like that. At least the theory goes that humans are part alien or something.

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