Muse's Mad Maestro: A Process

So after three weeks of mentally treading through the tar and mud of my discombobulated flow of mismatched ideas, I finally got my graphic design project finished.

Seeing as I haven't written here in a while, let me elaborate:
The second project of my graphic design class was to design a spread for a feature article of a music magazine. I knew in a heartbeat that I'd choose to do an article spread on my favorite band Muse, and since I loved and knew them so well, I thought the project would be cake.

Man, was I in for a wake-up call.

We started out with three base sketches, each based from one concept about our band or music-topic of choice. My initial concepts included:

1. Distrust and the 'Us vs. Them' theme that reoccur in their lyrics
2. Their live performances and how they're such larger-than-life spectacles
3. The effortless fusion of the rock and classical genres in their music

I ended up going with the last one because it seemed more conceptually compelling, and I thought I could pull a good image from that. Unfortunately, my first sketch was of Matthew Bellamy playing a mix between a guitar, violin and piano, shooting little cloud images of all his musical inspirations: Queen, Jimi Hendrix, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, etc. Not exactly the most elegant of images.

So I worked at it and thought of what I could do.
Should I draw them in a classical, black and white style? Nah, not BIG enough. I also wanted to make the picture epic, to echo their epicness. That's not a word.
Should I make Matt jump with his guitar into an orchestra? There aren't any good pictures of an orchestra I could use for that...
Should I put cheesy music notes everywhere?
Should I draw the cheesy music notes in a ROCK FASHION?
Should I superimpose their heads onto the bodies of the Greek Muses?*

Nothing seemed to be working out!
I spoke to nearly every single one of my friends and let them push ideas into me and I tried everything, but nothing worked. I was beginning to think that I couldn't do it anymore, that it was just too hard to visually combine rock and classical in the big, bombastic way that Muse does. I felt like I was wading through tar and sinking.

Then, after reading a few good recent articles on Muse, I decided to bang out some new concepts:

1. They've gone crazy since they produced The Resistance themselves, and pulled out all the stops
2. There is an air of ~romance~ that permeates through The Resistance, underneath all the resisting and evil governments and random flashes of classical music
3. Matt the mad maestro.

I loved the third one. The title "Mad Maestro" stayed in my head for a while, because it described Matt perfectly. What else could I say to elaborate on that? He's the Mad Maestro of Muse!

But because I was desperate for something to do, I ran with concept number 2 and produced this.

It was fun, especially painting over Matt's face to make him look more like a Romantic painting, but in the end I still wasn't feeling it.

I came back to "Mad Maestro" and thought, what if I just made him a conductor?
I've played with trying to fuse pictures of him playing his guitar and his piano and being with an orchestra, but I thought that above all those, the conductor of an orchestra would be more widely recognized as a symbol of classical music.
So I superimposed his head onto the body of a conductor.

And then I thought, what about the rock aspect?
Surprisingly simple: Just add a guitar slung over his back!
I liked it a lot. I thought I was going to just title it and get it done, let the image do all the talking. That was the simplest way I could come up with their fusion of rock and classical.

But wait!

It's not exciting enough, not the way Muse actually is! What was wrong with me? I needed something really attention-grabbing and bombastic, just like them, I needed a spectacle and possibly something that relates to space.

Thanks to this fantastic Star Brushset, I was able to very easily produce a nice space background.

After looking through some articles on Smashing Magazine (absolutely great and useful website for all you interested in computer artwork), I utilized some new skills I learned and finished up.

Critique was today.
I noticed a lot of people stopping to look at mine, and that felt really good. A lot of them seemed to like it :) The professor commended my solution to the "rock+classical" problem in the form of maestro-Matt with his guitar (yea, it's his guitar, I even looked up what sort of guitars Matt uses and picked the one that fit best, ha).

I thank everybody for all their help, I know I've been a bit of a whiner and pain for the duration of this project, but eventually I got out of the tar pit and came out with a project I'm truly proud of.

Click image for full view!

Oh, by the way, don't mind the cheesy text. I'm an artist, not a writer :P



*Points to whoever can guess which Muses Matt and Dom are!

As of Late

Whoo, school's a doozy.
I don't know if the classes are harder or I'm just not into them as much as I was in the Spring. Yea, that's it, I'm totally not into them as much. My art classes are fine, but everything else...? Not so much. I'm starting to wonder if the minor in Marketing was the best thing. If anything, at least I'll learn.

I've got a bunch of projects lined up, and I'm wondering if that's the best thing for me. I'm always wondering, always second-guessing. It's what I do, it keeps me on my toes. I'm rambling. On top of my graphic design and painting class assignments, I've got a comic project I'm working on, a business card to design, a logo and potential identity gig, screenprinting with a friend for kicks and Disney's ImagiNations Design Contest.

The Disney Design Contest seems pretty boss, though. And totally legit. All participants, regardless of the placement, have a chance at an internship at Disney Imagineering! That'd be so sweet if I could land that. I'm trying to get a team together, with the help of some random emails sent to me by the Society of Student Illustrators at school. Hopefully it works out.

Man, I need to earn money.
My boss at my old job decided that he can't afford to pay me any more, but he's still letting me do volunteer work in exchange for art supplies and studio time. Sweet deal.
I still need money.
I should really set up a portfolio website where I can post my stuff and tell people that I'm totally for hire. And then hope they hire me. I should also actually make more things I can put in a portfolio. I guess all these projects will do, right?

I've started to employ a new just freakin' do it philosophy. A step above Nike's, it's very throw-caution-to-the-wind, very get-your-ass-on-it, very why-the-hell-not. Essentially, I'm trying to get out of my phase of wondering if I'm capable enough to do something. I'm going to just freakin' do it. It's what made me take on all these projects.

Now let's just hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew.

Oh! I've also picked up playing the piano again.
I haven't really seriously done it in about four years. I don't know what came over me to make me want to play. Someone donated an upright piano to the studio I paint at the other week. When David (boss) asked me if I could play anything, I said sure! Because I did, I did play piano! But damn, I don't remember anything. I felt dumb. I felt like I wasted a talent that I had spent years cultivating. So it was probably that incident... and Matthew Bellamy's beautiful piano playing. I want that man to serenade me to sleep every night.

Not only am I getting back into piano, I'm going to do some "serious" pieces, starting with Chopin. Right now I'm learning his Nocturne in C-sharp Minor (opus posthumous), which is a good piece for me to learn. Hard enough, but not unattainably hard.

I do miss doing music, and hopefully the re-introduction of playing music in my life will ease the overflow of art.
Some people can work with being flooded by their products own specialty at all hours of the day and all days of the week, but I can't. I grew up having my interests spread out, and that's how I am now. I know I'm a graphic design student, but I don't get to learn some music or some physics theory or read a good piece of literature now and again, I'll go insane. I need horizontal exposure, or I'll die.

Well, my creativity will.

Anyway, I've think I've rambled on long enough.
Hopefully I'll post more here.

THE RESISTANCE - First Impressions

All right folks, so I finally got my paws on Muse's new album, The Resistance! Because I can't contain my excitement, I'm going to post a running review as I listen to it for the first time, song by song. Here we go! It's below the cut, you know what to do!
Update: Upon listening to it some more, I have more thoughts to add. So I just put them under the category "On Second Thought" after each song.

More...

Uprising
My first impression of the song was that the beat sounds a little like the one behind Britney Spears' Womanizer. Ever since then, I've had a hard time taking this song seriously! I like it though, it's right catchy to be sure, and so far I'd consider it this album's Supermassive Black Hole though admittedly, I liked Supermassive better.
On second thought: I do like this one a lot. After listening to it some more, I realized that I love the stomping beat and Matt's uncharacteristically low voice, combined with some of the best and most moving lyrics I've ever heard from them. "Another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed / And all the green belts wrapped around our minds / And endless red tape to keep the truth confined," and "If you could flick the switch and open your third eye / You'd see that we should never be afraid to die." This is an anthem, folks. You can riot to this song, and I love that. I thought his voice was sexy with conviction here, and I thought the same about Supermassive Black Hole... except he falsettos all the way through Supermassive and stays low on Uprising. I just find him sexy, I guess.

Resistance
Ooooh, this is nice so far: a simple piano melody with a running beat, sounds very Muse-y. All right, at the chorus, and I think this is a love song? A little bit like Black Holes & Revelations' Invincible. It sounds a little more mainstream in the guitar riffs, but the running tom beats on the drum and a few falling tones from the vocals are very much reminiscent of Muse.

Undisclosed Desires
I'm not feelin' this one as much. I cheated a little and read The Union's (my school newpaper) review of the album that hailed this song as the "poppiest song Muse has created to date, and it sounds like something that should be played in a club rather than on this album." I probably wouldn't even put it there, I'd much rather dance to Uprising.

United States of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage)
Now THIS is the kind of Muse song I get excited over! When I first heard it on a morning drive to school over the radio, I went nuts. There have long been comparisons to Queen when it came to Muse, and this song takes those whispered comparisons and blows them out of the water! (Why split these states, when there can BE OOOOONNNLY OOOONNE?) The Middle Eastern influence is gorgeous and lends itself well to the music, and Matthew Bellamy's piercing voice paints a strange picture of the future with a hopeful tone, underlined with an almost militaristic feel. Did I say that right? Does it make sense? I could see Russian Supremacist styled posters being made about Eurasia, to this song. Oh, and the ending is simply gorgeous. The Chopin Nocturne and the barely-audible children playing the background closes the song out nicely. I'm not normally one for long endings and I usually skip over them, but I can't help but stick around for this over and over again.
On second thought: Yea, still my favorite song off the album.

Guiding Light
Oh wow, so the zooming jet from the last track zooms right into the beginning of this song! Very nice :D So far, very different from what I've heard from them, but I like it. There's a LOT of synth, and the beat is nice, but minimal. Bellamy's voice is just floating over this river of synthesizers, it's a nice effect, and the bigness of the sound matches his soaring vocals well.
On second thought: This sounds a bit hymnal, don't you think? It's a nice effect.

Unnatural Selection
Organ chords. Matt's voice through a... megaphone? It wouldn't be the first (ahem, Feeling Good). Oh holy crap, a stomping beat that reminds me a little of Newborn right here. Now THIS sounds like Muse's older sound, but less unrefined to be sure, like they've been there done that, and now they're back to do it again, but cleaner. It's around the 4 minute mark, and it's slowing down a little, in the way Citizen Erased does a bit. This is classic Muse sound right here, and I totally love it.
On second thought: I've deemed this my second favorite off the album. I can't get enough of it, and I totally love when Matt's like, "Ooooocean! OOoooOoooceeaaann!"

MK Ultra
I like this one too :D Heh, admittedly, writing while listening is a little distracting, but that's okay, this baby's going in my car tomorrow so I can listen to it on the drive to school and back. As much as I love the way Muse experiments with new sounds, they really know how to rock in their own way, and whenever they bring that back (like in the last track, and this track) it gets a good fist-pumping from me. Really fast drums! 3:40 mark! Crunchy guitars! Wwwhhooooaaa!

I Belong to You (+Mon Coeur S'ouvre a ta Voix)
Whoa whoa, different sound. The jaunty piano beat reminds me a little of Scissor Sisters, or MIKA. Oh wait, there we go, it gets different. I really like this one. That's right Matt, let those vocals soar over those chimes. The instrumentation for this is beautiful, just what I'd expect from Muse when they're feeling rather experimental. Oh my God, he's singing in French. Somebody pick my jaw up from the floor, it dropped and I can't get it back up. This almost sounds like some kind of rock mix of an oldie French film, with the classical violins and pianos going at full blast. He's still singing in French. Where is my jaw? Oh, it's not over yet, it just can't stop being beautiful. Back to the beat, and—is that a clarinet?—yes, Muse, you do belong to me, and as a fan, I to you.
On second thought: Third favorite. Or fourth. Or maybe tied with Uprising. The song has a very dreamlike quality.

Exogenesis: Symphony Part 1 (Overture)
I wonder if this song, and its next 2 parts, have words. So far it sounds very dramatic and symphonic, like it should be a part of a play, specifically the part where a lover is about to die in a grandiose, heroic way. Did Matt really compose this? Oh wait, some heavy steady tom beats coming in. And... there's his voice! He's like some kind of ghost-angel when he sings, I swear. I love his falsetto to no end. I love the distorted guitar over the arpeggiating orchestra. Is "arpeggiating" even a word? Whatever, they're doing arpeggios.

Exogenesis: Symphony Part 2 (Cross-Pollination)
Lol, "cross-pollination" Muse, really? Some beautiful piano work to start, with... violins, and a chorus? Do mine ears betray me? I think it's a chorus, but I can't be sure. It goes into a waltz, and Matt's voice stands out more because the background is softer. It's like a ballade. Oh, I spoke too soon, here comes the beat! The just got more devastating. "Spread our codes to the stars / You must rescue us all!" Their music is made for all epic-journey movies. Every time I listen to songs like these, I just feel like going on some kind of epic quest. I must go! I HAVE to go! IT'S MY DESTINY!

Exogenesis: Symphony Part 3 (Redemption)
And finally, our journey comes to an end. This plays like a lullaby. The beginning piano bit reminds me a little of Joe Hisaishi, actually. And the drums and his voice comes in again, I really can't get enough of the way they come in like that, just like I can't get enough of how some disco songs start like slow ballads before bringin' on the dance beat. Well, there it is, it ended rather nicely.
On second thought: Upon reading the lyrics, the song just got more haunting. "Let's start over again / Just let us start it over again / Why can't we start it over again / And we'll be good / This time we'll get it right / Last chance to forgive ourselves." Ooooh. A new beginning. "Exogenesis" indeed.

Conclusion
All in all, it's a solid album. It started out kind of weak, but when it got to United States of Eurasia onward, it started sounding more like the Muse I know and love. That isn't to say it's too familiar, it's just familiar enough to give a smile and a nod, like when Trekkies spotted references to the old series in the new Star Trek movie. I kind of wish it ended with more of a bang, like Knights of Cydonia of the last album, but the Symphony was such a great ending, it really shows off all of Matt's compositional skills. I've definitely got my favorites, and a few not-favorites, and I'm rather proud of my own judgement. I don't believe I'm "too hardcore" of a fan to completely diss them when they put out a song I don't like, or defend them no matter what, but I think I'm able to distinguish what I love, like, and don't like without having it effect my "fan-ness."

I also very much like the presentation of the album. The art is colorful, different from their somewhat mono- or dichromatic palette in past albums, and it reflects how they've grown and branched out in this album. The way they list their lyrics reads a little like a sermon or an accusation (sometimes they're even interchangeable!) out of context, and packs a punch because the running theme of saving our devastated world, conspiracies, lies, and space has grown exponentially in Muse's work.

So there it is, a review of Muse's The Resistance from a semi-seasoned fan (became a fan between Absolution and BH&R).

Favorites: United States of Eurasia (+Collateral Damage), Unnatural Selection, Uprising, I Belong to You (+Mon Coeur S'ouvre a ta Voix)

When it comes to Muse, I tend to let certain songs grow on me over time, even if I initially didn't like them. That happened with last album's Map of the Problematique, Hoodoo and Take a Bow, as well as some older ones like Citizen Erased and Sing for Absolution. Likewise, some songs I enjoyed immensely to begin with grew old for me over time, like Space Dementia. A lot of it has not to do with Muse themselves, but rather who I am and how I feel at that particular point in time.




For more great The Resistance reviews, check out the sites below!
MusicRadar: Muse's The Resistance reviewed
LBUnion: Muse's New Album Fails to Inspire
(note: the review is actually good, even though the title suggests otherwise)