Muse + Skinner?

Band talk about working with Streets singer

14 April 08 - Muse have their sights set on working with Streets man Mike Skinner.

Talking to 6 Music, the band talked about their future plans and said they were up for doing a few collaborations as well as working on their next album.

Lead singer Matt Bellamy said: “I think we would like to do something with Mike Skinner – we haven’t asked him yet actually but we would like to do English’s answer to Rage Against The Machine.

“Like London rap rock – just like a little one off – it might be a laugh!”

When asked about the rumoured collaboration with Does It Offend You Yeah? Matt said: “We might have a go yeah – I think they just want a bit of a guitar lick on the top of one of their riffs.

“They’ve got the whole kind of thing taken care of. I might do something with them – that would be cool.”

It has been nearly two years since Muse released their last studio album Black Holes and Revelations , which came out in 2006.

New Songs for V Festival

But new material is just round the corner.

When Matt was asked if anything new would be played by the band at V festival, he said: “Yeah I think we would hope to play something new there – one or two things maybe.

“Whether that would be a single or not I don’t know but certainly we would like to try a couple of new tracks for the first time.”

“Like London rap rock – just like a little one off – it might be a laugh!”
Matt

He went on to talk about how they have more studio time now: “We built a studio in Italy – we’ve also got a rehearsal place in Devon as well.

“We’re probably gonna kind of move between the two – do a little bit of music at home (Devon) where we first came from – and a bit of recording in Italy.

“Yeah looking forward to it really – I think it’ll be the chance to record ourselves and spend a bit more time experimenting.

“We’ll be able to explore some new directions that we probably wouldn’t normally have the time to do because normally you book a studio for two weeks and that’s all you got but now we’ve got a studio for like a year so it will be nice to have the freedom to kind of explore some new terrority.”

Another Muse Album?

But with the future of the album format looking increasingly uncertain, how will one of Britain's biggest bands adapt to the changes? Drummer Dom said: “It’s hard to say how we are gonna release music in the future – it feels like such an open canvas to do whatever we want…it seems these days.

“I still like the concept of an album in some kind of traditional way you know cos if the music all fits together as a unit and conceptually flows then I think it’s a good thing to do.

“But I think the way we normally made music was so very varied and things can be grouped in different areas so we could kind of release music as and when we want to which is quite a nice place to be.”

Matt added “I think there’s likely to be an album at the end of it at some point but I think what might happen is we put a few bits out there - not necessarily associated with an album.

“Like a little rap rock single with Mike Skinner or maybe we will put out a couple of songs or do a few things here or there without it needing to be attached to an album – music for the sake of music.

“But I am pretty sure there will be an album at some point in the future.”

Kelly Stooke