aeolianblues

Some Manson-chucking damage to Muse's amps (wonder how that happened...)

"Don’t let your memes be dreams. Also, cabinets def sound better with a few @mansonguitarworks headstock shaped holes in em courtesy of Matt." (6th February 2022; Aleks Von Korff's Instagram)

The reflection of different producers on their sound is so fascinating to see, though I think Simulation Theory is a bit of a more complicated case. Costey was only one of several producers they had on for that album, which felt like them playing around with different contemporary pop aesthetics to see how they'd mesh with the classic Muse sound. While some collabs were a bit hit-and-miss, others went over like gangbusters. My personal favorite of these is Propaganda, because Timbaland is excellent at producing other rock bands while also adding a few hiphop touches.

Also, I love that while Will Of The People is self-produced, it also feels like a combination of different album vibes. Drones and Simulation Theory in particular strike me as dominant influences on that album.

Oh hey, so update on the production analysis!

So WOTP was self produced and everything, but Muse had additional engineers mixing. Two engineers Muse have worked with before: Aleks von Korff — worked with Muse on Simulation Theory, on parts of Origin remixxed—which was done with Costey in the producer's seat while Leckie did the album, so I'm curious to go listen to the remixed OOS and look for not just Muse's improved ear for production over the years, but also what having the sensibilities of the Producer Who Got Muse at the helm of the remixing changed. I guess it won't make much of a difference because the instrumentions/gear-use and recording was already done and all. Anyway—Aleks von Korff worked with them on ST, engineered some of the OOS remixing and also worked on Matt's other projects: his solo stuff and Jaded Hearts Club.

The other producer Muse have worked with before is Adrian Bushby, who's engineered on basically all post-BHAR Muse albums except Drones.

Both of them only mixed Kill Or Be Killed. All the others were produced by Muse presumably, and had other new engineers for additional mixing, which is interesting because of 1) the reception Kill Or Be Killed got from fans, but also 2) because of the mixing... I'm not the only person who went “where did the bass disappear??” on KOBK once the verse kicked in? It was one of the few times when, thinking of the soundspace graph, the low end felt emptier than it should've. Normally, a phat bass would sit there—the really fuzzy kind of bass sound Chris uses, that Matt often doubles to blow us all away.

So it's interesting that that Kill Or Be Killed mix would come from two producers who are both familiar with the Muse sound and way of recording.

So, uh.... fun fact: Aleks von Korff himself addressed the Kill Or Be Killed bass issue on Reddit.

There's also this postscript:

Oh my god thank you so much for this!! I'm taking a production elective for fun at uni this semester so chunks of this made sense to me! (hopefully...)

Re: the metal sound, of course... the classic 'scooped' metal sound is famously high treble high bass and no (/'scooped out') mids, and given Muse explicitly wanted to make a metal song, it makes sense that they didn't go with the heavy, familiar, full sound that Rich Costey gets them.

From what I understand about the mixing, it's that Matt's guitar here is deliberately more high-sounding than usual.

The standard metal guitar tones are more treble, more bass, no mid, which sounds really tinny/thinner, but clearly this guitar still sounds quite a bit like Muse, which is, as Aleks said, because they went heavy on the mid ranges, but no bass-range frequencies on Matt's guitars (or vocals, or any of the synth sounds). Chris makes up 100% of the lower frequencies on Kill Or Be Killed, except for the low frequencies of Dom's bass drums. Which I guess means that when Chris isn't playing, the mix sounds much thinner than it would normally be, because Muse usually fill out the higher, mid and lower ranges, but this time it's mostly the mid ranges and some of the higher ranges occassionally with Matt's guitar, and even less occassionally, his falsetto, so the bass and treble are significantly reduced compared to what we're used to with Muse.

When Chris plays something different to Matt I guess it doesn't add the bass to Matt's guitar the way it does when they double up, so it sounds kinda thinner on the verses. That's as far as my audio spectrum and EQ experience goes though. I'm not really sure why it's so hard to even hear Chris's bass at times though. Perhaps because the bass is what we're still thinking is the guitar, because that's what we're accustomed to over Muse's discography? I wonder if his bass too is a little higher than usual in order to sit even closer to Matt's guitar. I don't know.

The panning thing is so interesting though! Usually in mixes, because the only way you can really make each instrument on a song noticable is for it to either be louder or be sitting in a different frequency range from everything else, and that's often just not feasible, mixes take advantage of the fact that if something's slightly—just slightly!—louder in one ear than the other, you're more likely to notice it. Panning brighter sounds away from the centre, while keeping the vocals and drum beats right in the centre, is pretty standard in final mixes. What Muse have done is they seem to have panned the studio tracks to mimic their live set up, where Matt is to the audience's left, Chris is in the right, and by happy coincidence, Dom is in the centre!

There is some guitar in dead-centre, but whenever Matt or Chris have a notable part, it's panned a bit more towards the left or the right, which is why they're very noticable, but that's also possibly why they sound much thinner on those verses as opposed to the choruses, where the focus is more on Matt's singing and that upward-running synth, while the guitar and bass double up together in the centre chugging along, and apparently that sort of "pan things far and wide to make them stand out" was also part of the Rich Costey Mixes Muse package, so I guess I'm going to be sitting with Absolution and Black Holes this weekend listening keenly eh.

Lastly, the song sounds very different live because a live bass just sounds huge. And if you're on Chris's side of the stage (I was lol), enjoy your neck-ache for the rest of the week!

Oh fuck, @glass-needles-and-futurisms I think I get it now! Citizen Erased!