Muse Bassist Chris Wolstenholme Says Electronic-Based Music Was Too Difficult To Play Live
By Ed Biggs in Music / Festivals on 21 June 2015
The British three-piece have gone back to basics (or as basic as you can get with Muse) on their new seventh album 'Drones'.
Muse bassist Chris Wolstenholme has revealed the reason behind the recent musical reversion in the group’s new album Drones: the electronic-based music they had been making beforehand was “becoming more and more difficult to play live.”
In a new interview with Spotify, the 36 year old musician admitted that the question of how to translate the group’s records into the live setting – where Muse are unbelievably powerful – was one of the key factors that stopped them going further down the path of electronic experimentalism that had defined their two previous albums The Resistance (2009) and The 2nd Law (2012).
Chris Wolstenholme (l) admitted that their recent electronic-based music was getting too difficult to replicate live
“We got to the point where things were becoming more and more difficult to play live,” Wolstenholme revealed. “It was a real headache with certain songs on the last album to try and work out all the arrangements to get them to work live.”
More: Muse score their fifth consecutive British Number 1 album with ‘Drones’
Drones, released on June 8th, hit the top of the UK Albums Chart on the week of its release, shifting 73,000 copies and becoming their fifth British chart-topper. It also became their very first record to reach the top of the US Billboard 200 as well.
Wolstenholme continued: “In the last six albums additional things crept in apart from the rock three piece, so all these classical influences and particularly the electronic influence. I think if we had gone any further we would have been an electronic band.”
Indeed, this somewhat back-to-basics approach has won them more plaudits than they had done with their previous two LPs. He added: “I think for this album we decided it was important to maybe go back to where we started in a way and just concentrate on one guitar player, one bass player and one drummer and see how far we could take that.”
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