The Resistance is Coming

Recently there has been much news about Muse’s 5th studio album. Talks of them making a surprise appearance at Glastonbury this weekend were gone however, but seeing as it was just announced by Christopher Wolstenholme (bassist of Muse) that the recording of the album is complete, I’m not surprised. The band played a few gigs last year to wind down for recording, so I dont think they would start playing before the album was even mixed.

What I am surprised about is the interview Matt gave with jMag :

They sing about supermassive black holes, mix space-age riffery with western gunslingers (check the ‘Knights of Cydonia’ clip) and inspire their very own sexy fan-literature, aka Muselash. Let’s face it, Muse are H.O.T. Frontman Matt Bellamy dropped jmag an email from a secret underground bunker (aka a recording studio in his home town of Lake Como, Italy) where he’s finalising touches alongside drummer Dominic Howard and bassist Chris Wolstenholme. Just what we can expect when the British trio drop their brand new record, The Resistance, due out in September? Read on…

Interviewer: I’m betting the new Muse album will be stripped back, recorded on four-tracks with a mix like a muddy Ramones disc…just how wrong am I?
Matt Bellamy: We’ve always been into using whatever is the latest technology and recording methods. To be honest, we are not keen at all on deliberate lo-fi recording techniques, as they seem to be a tribute to the past. I’m more interested in the future. So the album sounds contemporary, not retro!

Can you talk us through what sort of studio set-up you guys have over there in Italy?
It’s set up in a series of underground bunker type rooms, constructed inside a mountain with a lift required to get down to the rooms. It would be possible to survive a direct hit from nuclear bomb if you were in the deepest room with a few cans of baked beans and a a gas mask. We don’t have any large live rooms, just lots of small rooms, so, for example, we have one room full of guitar amps, one room full of bass rigs, one room full of drums, one room full of tinned food, etc…with some windows connecting some of the rooms.

What are some of the studio tricks you’ve learnt from making Showbiz to Black Holes and Revelations? What have you learnt not to do to avoid studio madness?
To avoid madness we have learned to get on with it and not dwell over one particular aspect for too long. We actually did go mad working on Black Holes…as sometimes we spent days doing thinks that should have taken minutes. A fast flow of ideas “getting to tape” is more important than technical perfection.

What’s the ethos to production and mixing this time ’round – who are you working with?
Our general approach to production is that anything goes. Also, musicians tend to make the best producers as they’re able to audio-visualise precisely how to solve a problem. This is why we’re self producing; in a way we’ve always self produced since the first album. We are working with Adrian Bushby, who is a great engineer and we are currently mixing with Spike Stent who is making things sound fresh, fat and aggro.

Does winning “Sexiest Male” at the NME Awards mean you’re only gonna write about being a sex symbol now? Or are there other themes popping up on new tracks?
Not sure what happened there – some of our hardcore messageboard fans ganged up on the NME voting website to wind me up! The album contains the usual mix of song themes, from desire for political change to love songs to songs about bankers hanging from lampposts.

We’re told the new record will be “orchestral”. Which means what, exactly? Church organs and batons, or…
There is only really one track (in 3 x 4 minute sections) at the end of the album, which could be called symphonic due to the presence of an orchestra throughout. The church organ is on one of the “normal” songs.

There are 120 pages of speculation on the Muse messageboard about the new record (including photo’s of llamas). How do you feel about so much speculation? Does it put any pressure on, or could you really not give a toss?
Not sure how they found out that llamas toenails are back after a long hiatus. We used them on Origin of Symmetry, but they are back with a vengeance on this album. It doesn’t put on pressure, it’s nice to know people are interested

First od all, you might say its pretty odd for a person to have a mountain as a bomb shelter. Not for Matt. I’m also very exited about the use of the Organ and the llama toenials, sounds like it will be similar to Origin of Symmetry, Muse’s second album. This is without a doubt one of my mot anticipated albums of the year. And I’m seeing them live in Novemeber for “The Resistance Tour”. They’re a band of epic proportions, and the grandeur can only increase.

“The Resistance” goes on sale on 14th September.

New Design…. Again

Yes sadly, my Macbook has shed light on a very visible design flaw in most of my designs, until now that is. I’ve been accidentally using Color Management in Photoshop, and that renders the colours differently on OSX. And I’ve been doing this for years. There should be a very big warning when starting Photoshop to stop idiots like me from doing this. And to think, if I hadn’t switched OS’, it might have been years until I had realized the mistakes I have been making, I might have missed out on important clients, lost grades in college, and considered generally to be the worst designer of the 21st Century.

But today I unveiled version 9.. yes version 9 of my not-so-popular website/blog/portfolio. 9 designs in the space of 9 months. That has to be some kind of record, no? And if it isn’t , it should be. People say that a designers worst client is themselves, they are never happy with their site looks. But I think this one has potential.

Dark and Dirty. The icons are not mine, but from two free icon sets from Function, and while they are fantastic, they dont go very well. I like the form of the icons, but they are too varied and I really wanted some consistency. I may ask them to develop some, once I have failed miserably in Illustrator.

I’ve added a lot of functionality into this one, some of which were evident in my previous design iteration. Things like the auto-incrementing Twitter followers number in the sidebar, the links at the bottom of this post that post to Twitter, Facebook etc.. really adds some interaction to the site, which I want. Unlike utterly generic web 2.0107868689769 crap that looks out of place, but is seen on over a million blogs.

I’ve finally gotten to the stage where I can pretty much do the design I want, usually I would do something in Photoshop, but be too worried that it would be impossible to replicate in a Browser. Also I’m pretty proud that I did this solely on a new machine, a machine which I have so much to learn still. I used Coda for the first time too, and honestly it is without a doubt the best text editor I have ever used.

Overall, am I happy with this design? Sure. Do I think I could improve it? Definitely. Does this mean that I wont change it drastically in under a month? Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

Miralinks 17/06/09

Day 3 into my new fangled toy has been pretty good. Overall Mac does some things better than Windows, but in others, Windows is the victorious OS. I cannot use any Adobe apps on Mac, no matter how hard I try.

On an unrelated note, I’ve noticed I’ve been making quite a few horrendous mistakes when desiging in Photoshop, and the color management is different in Windows and Mac. Becasue of this I’ve decided to just redesign my site again, to both save time, and to challenge me with my Mac keyboard.

So lets start my inaugural post on my Mac machine with a few quality links

• One of my favourite designers, Chris Coyier, is going to be writing a book about my favourite CMS platform, Wordpress. Cant wait to check it out.
• It’s amazing how many people dont know what a browser is.
• Turns out its not us pirates who are killing the music industry. Thanks Bernie.
• 50 great icons sets, I will be including a few in Miralize v9 (Yup 9…)
• How to intentionally become a loner on a social network : Twitter
• Microsoft are seriously upping their game
  
• Kasabians new album is redefining ladrock..
  

Happy 7000th Day

A few weeks ago, alot of bloggers talked about Wolfram Alpha, stuggling to find its usefulness. Some even went as far as listing pointless joke questions to ask the powerful yet young computational search engine. Things like “What is the meaning of life?” dont belong in this engine. What is both interesting and fun at the same time are often the simplest.

I typed in my birthday, “18 April 1990″ into WolframAlpha to find that the date was 6999days ago. Tomorrow I turn 7000 days old. Or 1000 weeks. Or if you really want to be boring 19 years old and 2 months.

Some other info about that day 7000 days ago:

• sunrise : 6:31 am GMT/IST
• sunset : 8:39 pm GMT/IST
• duration of daylight : 14 hours 8 minutes

I also learned that I have the same birthday as Conan O’ Brian, and America Ferrera (Ugly Betty).

So you see, Wolfram Alpha may only be for mathematicians and idiots for now, but you can get some use out of it. Just dont ask “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

I’m a Mac, still a PC

So I made the switch today. I went to the bank, took out 1080 euro (the feeling of 1000+ cash in your hand is empowering), and bought a 13″ Macbook Pro. I could have saved for a few weeks and bought a 15″ mid or high level, but my reasoning was:

• I didnt know if I would like it
• I didnt want to spend that much
• I wanted somehing small yet powerful.

The entry model was going to be more than enough to match that criteria. Yes its still a little expensive, and yes I would be happier with a 15″ screen, but honestly this is the best machine I have owned.

First of all the presentation is the best I’ve seen.. ever. The packaging was neat and simple. The welcome video, was actually very welcoming. And the build of the machine is just amazing. They’ve hidden the speakers too well, I can’t find them.

There is a distinct learning curve, but not an impossible one. The keyboard layout is different, mouse gestures are most definitely different, window managment is different. All these differences seem like a huge adjustment, but they’re all pretty manageable when looked at perspective.

The hardware obviously looks amazing. The black finish mixed with aluminum is probably one of the most used color palletes for hardware these days, but Apple pulls it off well. Nothing inside the casing is really outstanding, but Apple make up for it both cosmetically and in usability.

The trackpad is probably one of the more complex aspects of the Macbook. I like the gestures, but coming from a Windows background, I’m not that used to using several fingers to maneuver around the OS, and so I now cannot use my thumb as a rest for my finger . However the right click is one thing I’ve managed to conquer . Ok I lied, but this is all new to me

The software is both incredible yet extremely confusing for me. Most things are mouse-orientated but I use the keyboard most often on my Windows PC. This gives me a slight headache, but these are early days.

I dont like the whole expand-windows-as-much-as-you-need. When I maximize things in Windows, I do it because I don’t want any other application grabbing my attention. But theres always something interesting in the window behind that always catches your eye, which can be a bit distracting. I guess I have to get focused.

Overall this is an amazing machine (well I cant call it PC anymore can I, not really). The 2GB ram is actually pretty sufficient. Probably because this is based on Unix, but i’m no expert. Enjoying my Mac is a severe understatement. I love teaching myself new things, its the best way I learn. One of the most enlightening periods of self-education was learning to use a computer, and now it feels like I’m doing it again, only with a head start