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Muse UFO stage
If there is one band on the road today that continues to consistently up the ante in the visuals department, it’s Muse. In fact, their new stage construction is so gigantic, it blocked MTV’s outgoing broadcast signal during this month’s Rock Am Ring festival in Germany. The question is, does a massive arena–sized stage and lighting system like this work at a festival?
Muse floating acrobats
Muse seem to have an understanding of the dynamics of arena performance, and it’s a hard-fought one having spent years on the road. By 2004 they were at Glastonbury and have been on a meteoric rise internationally since their acclaimed 2006 Black Holes and Revelations tour, which was the first ever to sell out at the new Wembley Stadium and featured elaborate special effects, multitudes of lights and two acrobats floating above the crowd hanging from huge white balloons.
Opening for the U2 360 tour took Muse into even larger arenas in the round, performing with the largest and most expensive stage and lighting system ever devised. It was also the highest grossing tour of last year.
Muse Live
So no wonder that they followed up that experience with their visually stunning The Resistance tour. The smoke machines were already kicked–in 45 minutes prior to the performance and when the curtains dropped, the trio were perched in the middle floors of what appeared to be video–wall skyscrapers which independently move up and down whilst numerous lasers scanned the audience. Despite the audacity of this setup, Dom Howard, Muse’s drummer, recently grumbled, “most of our ideas get shot down by health and safety and it starts out much more ambitious than it ends up being but we’re always trying to push it to the limits of the laws.”
Well, even though Muse is still technically on the same tour, they have changed the setup once again to that broadcast–blocking spaceship from Germany, with its myriad of lasers and led–projected screens. Will this be too much for FujiRock? Tune in and see.
