Welcome one and all

Welcome to my new little corner of the blogosphere!

Essentially, I wanted somewhere slightly more sensible than my Livejournal with which to inflict my own special brand of highly pretentious art reviews upon the world. To clarify, by art I mean something like "music that I listen to and films that I watch and books that I read and stuff that I see and cutting social commentary." Something like that, but punctuated properly and without the tongue crippling run on sentence.

I thought to kick off I'd rabbit for a little about something that I love as opposed to something I've obtained fairly recently. Let's set the scene: I adore Muse. They're one of my favourite bands. It's Autumn 2003. I have tickets to see them in November. They have a new album out. It's called Absolution. I knew I was going to love it before I heard it. I'm sure I just sat and looked at the cover art, absorbing it for a while before I even put the CD in the player.

And did I love it? Did I how.

Muse - Absolution

There recently seems to've been something of a buzz about this album. When I realised this I was subtlely confused because, as mentioned, it's now over two years old and while still being both incredible and incredibley important it's intrustion into the popular consciousness should by now have moved to a more stately level where it sits recognised as a small slice of greatness.

Admittedly it didn't take long for it to process that there hasn't actually been a buzz about it at all. Instead what's happened is that lots of people within my social circles have discovered them and are beginning to rave about Absolution. My copy of it is floating around in that circle somewhere. So I suppose it's my fault for having impeccable taste. What can you do?

Muse had always been somewhat dark and apocalyptic, and Origin of Symmetry had even gathered something of a towering dignity in its sharp bleak stylings. Absolution was in many ways the fufilment of this promise, it is truely dark and it's the most apocalyptic piece of music I've ever heard. Don't mistake that, it is one solid piece of music, it really has to be listened to as an album and it does (like all Muse really) take a bit of work to get. It isn't easy listening.

What it is however, from the first growing staccato stomps of the Introduction to the last classical wails of Ruled By Secrecy is a gothic soundscape. It's like entering a cathedral of innovative art-rock. Except it isn't really a cathedral, it's a gothic castle clinging to an outcropping of rock over a great precipice in Southern Romania. It's St Paul's set against majestic thunderclouds. It's the Sistine Chapel after it's been hit with a nuclear weapon or twelve. It's beautiful, august musical deconstruction painted in fantastical shades of puse and midnight.

Frankly it's amazing.

Stand out tracks: Hysteria, Butterflies and Hurricanes, The Small Print.

Get it. Get it now.