(MUSE) MTV2 - Origin Of Symmetry Interview


c.2001

Interviewer is Edith Bowman

Q: I listened to your album, new album, coming up on the train today. And I just wanted to hear it live basically after listening to the album. Is that pretty much how you recorded it? Pretty much live?
MATTHEW: Yeah, yeah. Yeah we sort of got like a PA system and everything, so when Dom was playing drums, it felt like we were on stage. 
DOMINIC: Mic'd up the whole room n'stuff, and set it up in like a stage situation as well. 
MATTHEW: Yeah, we were trying to capture the energy of like a three piece thing, sound, that we get on stage. We were trying to transfer that a bit better than we did on the first album this time, so...
Q: Yeah, because I've read that you said in interviews that for people to really get what you are about, they have to see you live. Is that...   
MATTHEW: Well yeah, I think that playing live is...I got into a band in order to play live, that is what I like doing most, so I think they will see us for what we really are.
(Concert footage) 
Q: Do you know what the capacity is tonight? How many people?
MATTHEW (shaking his head): I don't know
CHRISTOPHER (tentatively): About 2,000...
MATTHEW: No it's not..is it? 
CHRISTOPHER (nodding): Uh hum...
Q: So Boulogne...60,000 people was it? And then 2,000 tonight? What do you prefer? 
MATTHEW: 300 in Bergen, Norway. There was 300 people just sweaty all around us...and I enjoyed that a lot. 
Q: Really intimate
MATTHEW: It feels really loose. And yeah, it was quite a surprise, but no, I think I love playing gigs like that...15,000 that sort of size. 2,000 something like that...because, um, cos you get to use your own rig, your own PA stuff and you can get the sound good. And when it gets bigger than that sound, it sometimes gets a bit milky and lost in the wind...like a fart in the wind  
(More concert footage)
Q: Next single off the album is going to be, "Newborn"? Which is just, I think an absolutely brilliant opener to an album to have. Absolutely cracking. What's the song about?  
(PAUSE - EVERYONE CHUCKLES)
MATTHEW: Er...um....oh...
Q: Let's have a story
MATTHEW: That's a song about um...let me think, let me think, let me think...um..."Newborn"...something to do with like, if you imagine, like...uh. some of the song is about how influence of technology in our life makes us feel disconnected to each other, at the same time as being mentally connected to each other...feeling of like not being connected to each other, but we are, and um so it's a feeling of like of the mind evolving away from the body...and but and but how when that happens you just get this yearn to just be something physical, and feel something. The sensation of physicalness.
(PAUSE)
Q:...That explains it very well
MATTHEW: Something like that
(CONCERT FOOTAGE)
Q: Are any of you classically trained, music wise?
MATTHEW: (softly): No
Q: It sounds it on the album. I mean, the piano stuff especially
MATTHEW: I sort of...I listen to a lot, I listen to a lot of piano stuff like that and I sort of try and play it, but I can never read music. So, um, I always try and listen to a piece of music and try and play it afterwards, but it would always be like a botched version, you know, so? 
Q: You've done a cover of "Feeling Good" on the album, which is a really nice version of it. Really, really. Your voice goes from like really beautiful and angelic and almost choirboy like to this sort of, just screaming sort of...how do you speak when you get up in the morning and gave to do a gig? Are you always really hoarse in the morning?
MATTHEW: No, no, I'm usually all right. I had to sing this morning actually. I had to sing of course...obviously here...but the thing was that's actually a song...like that's one of my favourite songs of all time...the original...and uh, and that's sort of a long the lines of what I was talking about a minute ago of like hope, you know and trying something positive, and seeing everything through newborn, just very new eyes again, like everything is new for the first time again. Like all the trees, everything looks lush again, you know? That's what that song is about. And I was like...I like simplifying myself.
(Everyone laughs)
(More concert footage )
MATTHEW: When I'm put on stage and I'm making music, I get this feeling of immense bliss...like immense simple-ness. Like of being really simple. It feels like all your memories go, and all those things that imprison you like your possessions, your house, your lifestyle, all those things that restrict you, and you start to think those actually is what you are. When I'm playing music, all those things sort of disappear, and I just become sort of simple...and erm...what was the question? Erm, what's that got to do with anything?
(More laughter)
(Further concert footage)
Q: Your last single "Plug In Baby"...I read that you said it was about (I'm not sure if this is true or not, but this is what was written in your biog), that it was about if you could genetically modify a puppy and stop it from growing up?
(Long pause)
Q: And you said that, it was in quotes that you said it.
MATTHEW: I say a lot of things...
(Laughter)
MATTHEW: The thing is, I don't really know what the song is about*, you know. It just happened. It just happens. It's pretty random. If you imagine like using an emotion, and that emotion is like looking through all the emotions you have experienced in your life, and just picking out little bits and putting it together. So one line might be relating to an ex girlfriend, and one line might be relating to something happening to you when you were young. 
Q: Yeah...
MATTHEW: Some line might be a fear, and hope of evolution of mankind, you know? But it is generally activated by emotion, so the song doesn't have a theme or anything within, it's more like little bits. The only thing that is thematic would be the emotion of the song. So the emotion of that song would be similar to...probably like the fears and hopes of technology evolving around us, without us, and you know taking over from us
(Concert footage)
Q: Playing your new album live, it must be...after you've played the last album so much, it must be quite nice get a completely new start...
DOMINIC: Yeah definitely. That's been the thing. That's what's made this tour been so good. The best tour we've done really.
(Everything shifts then, as MATTHEW gets hold of the windjammer*, and DOMINIC starts running his hands over it. Everyone chuckles)
Q: Will you let him answer his question!?
DOMINIC: But it's yeah...of course it's exciting, it's new stuff, it's fresh...and it's new things and watching 'em...like all the old songs, the way we play them now is completely different to how we did them on the album, and how we used to play them as well, so again it's probably going to happen with the new stuff, so it's sort of exciting to see where they are going to go, and what we are going to do with them now you know...
Q: Are you going to tour for the rest of the year? What are your plans?
MATTHEW (who now has his hand on DOMINIC'S shoulder): I think we are going to tour...
DOMINIC: I think we are going to tour
MATTHEW: I think we are going to be touring for a couple of years...probably a few more years really.

Notes
The meaning of "Plug in Baby": KERRANG thought it was about his guitar.
Windjammer: Furry mic boom cover, used for outdoor recordings.




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