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Matt Bellamy of Muse gives a shout out to Conspiracy Factualists |
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Written by Term Defined
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Sunday, 29 March 2009 |
Source: Muse Live
Hey Matt Bellamy will you produce our first album?
Muse's Matt Bellamy offers VICKI ANDERSON a few revelations about conspiracy facts and life on Mars.
Get set for the best live gig of your life at the Westpac Arena on Sunday when UK new-prog rock supergroup Muse will surely send the stage into lift-off mode.
Muse -- Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard -- formed in Teignmouth, Devon, when they got together as 16-year-olds after their former bands combusted. All those years ago they left their plastering jobs and took a gamble on music. Fast forward to 2007 and, deservedly, they've just been voted the Best Live Act in 2007 by Q Magazine.
I'm expecting to talk to Wolstenholme so it's a real surprise when the big cheese of Muse, Bellamy, rocks onto the line.
If music is the voice of each generation then Bellamy should be considered the mouthpiece of the conspiracy theorists, or factualists as he'd have them known.
Luckily, my mate Raoul has often bent my ears with his theories on global domination and what really happened at 9/11 so I'm well prepared for a 45-minute conversation about hidden world news.
"A lot of people get labelled as conspiracy theorists," says Bellamy. "It's a clever way of making someone devalued; lessening what they're talking about before they've even talked about it.
"It's close to propaganda calling people conspiracy theorists. In lots of cases, they are actually conspiracy factualists."
Who engineered 9/11? Was there really a plane? Is global warming a swindle to keep the developing world in poverty? Is oil running out or is it a hoax to drive prices up? Is there a clandestine organisation of conglomerates looking for New World Order?
"There's loads of ideas out there. The ones I like the most are the ones where people tend to stick to the facts."
Muse aim to encourage "sheeple" to open their eyes and minds with their various lyrics on these topical subjects.
"There are a few risks out there in life but you're far more likely to get knocked down by a car than bombed by a terrorist. It's just non- stop stuff to make people scared and make them buy more things off the internet and hide in the house. It's a horrible way of making the sheep afraid to leave the herd."
Bellamy is suspicious of surveillance technology and the apparent ease with which people can tap into your private life. He believes identity cards are not far away.
He believes that people need to wake up and march in protest more often.
"The only way to get change is for the masses to team together and start marching in the streets.
"Democracy has had a go, but now we need a, hopefully gentle, revolution.
"It's unusual I talk this much about it in an interview, really. There's definitely a fair few songs on the album that really go for this kind of stuff, but there are other elements, too. I try to sing from various perspectives."
Muse's latest album, Black Holes and Revelations, is simply a stunner; orbiting whirls of soundscapes and distortion distorted within an inch of its life.
I have a theory of my own. I ask Bellamy if the sexy track Supermassive Black Hole is an ode to supermodels. Part of the lyrics are, as far as I can make out: "Grey shoes burning in the dead of night and the super star's sucked into the super masses." Bellamy, however, laughs loudly.
"There are no burning shoes, woman; the word is glaciers," he laughs. "It is sort of more like a shallower approach and I don't mean that in a negative sense, some of our music tends to be deep and complex. It's nice to take a breather now and then do something a bit more light-hearted. Starlight was a bit like that. It was a big change for us, exploring the more optimistic side.
"Some people in bands tend to get all caught up in boxing themselves into one particular thing in the hope that will make themselves stand out a bit more. I used to think a bit like that, I suppose, but now I just want to be, I sound really '70s man, but I just want to be myself, man.
"With this album we wanted to show that we're not just a bunch of miserabilists."
The Knights of Cydonia -- as pictured on the album cover of Black Holes and Revelations -- relates to another of Bellamy's theories. He believes that we all began life on Mars.
"Cydonia is the area of Mars where people think there are some structures. I like the idea that some kind of battle took place and a few good people decided to bail out and come to Earth and have a go here. They are the Knights of Cydonia. I like the idea of that.
Black Holes and Revelations was initially born in a bat-infested cave in the south of France where the group sequestered themselves. They found a studio that had been closed down for about 50 years. Appropriately, it was originally a knight's templar.
"We were there for six weeks and we were going a bit beserk and mental with cabin fever and then we decided to go completely the other way and went to New York to record. But by that time we were so sure of what we were doing that it all happened very quickly so we recorded most of the songs in a couple of weeks. We actually mixed it in London, but we came to Italy to do the strings."
Bellamy says it's too early to speculate on how their next album will sound. He's thinking of combining electronica with classical elements, but it's not until they start arranging the songs that they take shape and, often, take on a completely different direction.
Muse added Christchurch to their New Zealand playlist as they're keen to check out the scenery and as a response to the loads of requests on their internet message board over the years from Cantabrians.
There's only one person Bellamy hopes doesn't show up at the gig.
"There's this one guy, I'm not sure where he's from -- he has an East European accent but I think he's from Ireland. He's a bit of a stalker type. He has endless handwriting in books with words circled and pages ripped out and then he puts in weird cryptic messages with my name. He puts car registration plates with the End Is Nigh written on it.
"The scary thing with dealing with the conspiracy world is that every now and then you get one of those who've gone fully over the edge. Whenever I get a package from him, that's always the weirdest day of the tour."
Muse have come a long way since their teen days of hiring out a boxing ring and stashing cider behind the ropes, "getting drunk and trashing the gear".
"Our dreams came true -- we just wanted to tour England when we started and now that has evolved into a whole different thing. Now it's more that we've become more conscious of the impact we might be having on people. You can't get too caught up in it, but I'm aware of wanting to have some positive impact with what I'm doing. I don't want everyone to get depressed listening to our music. I'd rather help them feel inspired and able to change things; that's what I'm aiming for."
Or as the Knights of Cydonia would say -- Don't waste your time or time will waste you. |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 29 March 2009 )
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