| Muse - Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (ianmacd) |
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| Notes |
| Recorded at the Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Great audience recording. From the info file: Muse Ziggo Dome Amsterdam The Netherlands 17th December 2012 (2012-12-17) RECORDING: Type: Audience master, recorded from first ring, section 106, row 7, seat 185. The distance from the PA was too far to accurately estimate, but must have been in the region of 50 metres. Source: Factory-matched pair of Schoeps CCM 41V microphones (DINa mounted) -> Marantz PMD661 recorder with Oade Concert Mod (-18 dB gain/44.1 kHz/24 bit WAV) Lineage: Audacity 2.0.2 * applied variable amplification for consistency across recording * attenuation of sound of audience * added fades * split tracks * converted to 16 bit -> FLAC (compression level 8) [libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917] Taper: Ian Macdonald (ianmacd) SET LIST: 01. [03:54] The 2nd Law: Unsustainable 02. [05:09] Supremacy 03. [04:39] Hysteria 04. [03:59] Panic Station 05. [05:24] Resistance 06. [04:19] Supermassive Black Hole 07. [04:25] Animals 08. [02:07] [drum and bass solo] 09. [05:51] Explorers 10. [04:11] Sunburn 11. [04:33] Time Is Running Out 12. [03:53] Liquid State 13. [04:56] Madness 14. [04:08] Follow Me 15. [04:07] Undisclosed Desires 16. [04:31] Plug In Baby 17. [00:38] [roulette video moment] 18. [08:15] New Born 19. [01:16] [encore break] 20. [04:29] The 2nd Law: Isolated System 21. [06:11] Uprising 22. [08:37] Knights Of Cydonia 23. [03:28] [encore break] 24. [00:28] [band introduction] 25. [04:34] Starlight 26. [05:58] Survival Total running time: 114:00 MD5 CHECKSUMS: 188e9e51aa2dc40e39d69d60ad6a8ce2 flac/01_the_2nd_law_unsustainable.flac 4a9e56f0d855c67067d5725dc461cf04 flac/02_supremacy.flac 117cfef6d41c97175ed9d9fb2d3223d5 flac/03_hysteria.flac 0ec29d58865b465f451abcf12152371f flac/04_panic_station.flac 06331ebd6682155df8591886cd82a197 flac/05_resistance.flac fd7cb886582aeebffa3f49fe7b614058 flac/06_supermassive_black_hole.flac 6a778a207fca6f89c2e4e82c8691e1aa flac/07_animals.flac 7730136a70a074ec7a8f3f4eef765289 flac/08_drum_and_bass_solo.flac 152d12263ad493f03e120e478b9dade3 flac/09_explorers.flac 3b741ea23012c020ad03fa0127774bd8 flac/10_sunburn.flac 0f8ebb01af185c5e2cb11455f2bb61ab flac/11_time_is_running_out.flac af394ecdeb4fdf9b910e3722e795b722 flac/12_liquid_state.flac 10a65291b4f7a984bcaca44caa287d78 flac/13_madness.flac ef7fafc1df13e55ce331d371a2a2fbe5 flac/14_follow_me.flac f6916f52b036ce47e76d1725e19035ba flac/15_undisclosed_desires.flac 3b02654ec3959945e7fb73c854179787 flac/16_plug_in_baby.flac e00ff0adf631765bc6bc68222177dbbe flac/17_roulette_video_moment.flac f5d22eacdf2c3ad9e081459fe0c6638b flac/18_new_born.flac 660d018375ec287fb1dbc9769f0354ed flac/19_encore_break.flac e216205751653ed6c24eef62d1ad1732 flac/20_the_2nd_law_isolated_system.flac 1002bd10ad367e714f83ff70dd3e2d33 flac/21_uprising.flac db7aa03a5aafed31d6b82b891ba29322 flac/22_knights_of_cydonia.flac 2e97aafd956ee13e8ac2dd054c0b11e5 flac/23_encore_break.flac 9a9027d86ed01d056c7bc535b174b5f1 flac/24_band_introduction.flac 493554e2d05df9e0712f2b960d04618f flac/25_starlight.flac 81e8b690cfeff75b5462cc7c319a7036 flac/26_survival.flac e4d6559b34923730dbfc5537a210d56e flac/checksums.ffp NOTES: I'm not a huge fan of Muse, so I decided to have a sit-down at this one. Actually, my seated ticket also happened to be the only one I could manage to scrape off Marktplaats for face value. Tickets for this long sold-out gig were going for twice face value months ahead of the show and anything listed for even close to the official asking price was being snapped up within minutes of being advertised on-line. Having previously been to the Ziggo Dome on only three occasions and having taped from the floor each time, I decided this would be a good opportunity to try recording from the first ring to see what kind of results that would yield. If it worked well, it would be an option for future shows. I actually have a very good seat tonight, at the back of the auditorium, slightly off to the right, but directly facing the stage. On my previous visits to the venue, I was down in the pit, much closer to the PA lengthwise, but also far below it. This time, although I'm further away, I have a much better line to the source of the sound. Another advantage of having a seat at a gig attended by 17,499 other people is that you can turn up whenever you like, secure in the knowledge that you will still have the same spot you would have had if you'd been standing outside at 18:30, waiting for the doors to open. I pitch up a little too late to catch the start of Andy Burrows' support set, which is a pity, because I would have liked to record it. Instead, I use it as an approximate mic and input level check for Muse. I then relax and enjoy the rest of Burrows' mellow set. Muse come on just after 20:45. The place is packed to the rafters and I can't see an empty seat anywhere in the rings or a square metre of unused space down below. Even those dud seats behind the stage, which are usually conspicuously empty even at sold-out shows, are occupied tonight. The seating is quite comfortable and steeply staggered, which, I must say, is great. No matter how huge the bloke in front of you, there's no way your view can be obstructed. But whilst this sitting-on-your-arse lark is ideal for an unhindered view of the stage, I'm much too far away from the action. It may as well be a flea circus up there. The light show and video screens provide welcome, dare I say necessary augmentation of the three -- nay, four: there's a keyboard player, too -- diminutive insects performing on stage. Quite apart from the issue of my distance from the band, there's the inescapable fact that the huge stage provides a lot of ground for three -- no, damn it, four -- people to cover. Without all of the window-dressing, they could end up looking a little lost. It takes a lot of stage presence to fill a void like that, but you know what? I reckon Muse could pull it off even without the attention-grabbing frills. The sound is surprisingly good up here, but not nearly loud enough. The Ziggo Dome is cavernous and it takes a lot of sound to fill it. On the other hand, the volume is sufficient for me to tell that the sound must be fantastic down there on the floor, closer to the stage. My first inkling of how lame I am for sitting down at a rock gig is in the bank. There will be many more this evening. Another disadvantage of sitting up here is that my fellow arse-sitters are more your apathetic, wishy-washy cinema-going crowd than your dedicated music fan. Whilst I am at a gig, but THEY are having having a night out with friends against the backdrop of some pretty aural wallpaper. They think nothing, for instance, of getting up to go and buy a round of drinks; and not just mid-gig, but mid-song, too; and we're packed in tightly enough that anyone seated between them and the aisle must also get up to let them out. Thankfully, that doesn't include me, or I would get pissed off very quickly indeed. Down below us, hundreds of pit-dwellers hold a mobile phone aloft, a sight that, from a distance, recalls the cheesy lighter-swaying audiences of all those rock ballad bands you'd rather die than have to see. In the kingdom of the smart-phone, everyone's a cameraman. Muse are an interesting beast. Equal parts progressive and hard rock, with elements of pop and classical thrown in, the paperwork says they should be an anachronism, a commercial non-starter, dead before they've even got out of the starting blocks. At best, one can see them carving out a niche as a diversion for people who think that Steven Wilson is the new messiah, but how on earth did they manage to procure cool status for themselves and rise to this level of popularity? I don't begrudge them a thing, mind you. What they've done is very clever and the musicianship is top notch. How on earth they've managed to market it to the unwashed masses, on the other hand, is anybody's guess. Of course, we'd all like to believe that marketing has nothing to do with it, that the music sells on its own merit, but none of us really believes that any more. Everyone's got an angle nowadays. Matt Bellamy's overwrought falsetto and sustained vibrato add to the pomposity of it all. Muse court danger by flirting with taking themselves too seriously, conjuring the frightful spectre of a latter-day Queen (e.g. 'Resistance'), even if Bellamy himself doesn't quite possess the self-assured, hyperbolic swagger of Freddie Mercury. Bellamy is, however, the axis around which Muse revolve. He's a decent enough singer, but it's notable how many songs are performed live in a different key this evening, presumably to make the going easier for him. It's as a musician and songwriter that Bellamy comes into his own, however. With skills as a guitarist and pianist strong enough to cause envy in many a single instrument practitioner, he is the creative powerhouse of the band. Some of those chunky guitar riffs are so good that one has to fight the urge to rise to one's feet and show some bodily appreciation for the way Bellamy's licks cut through the air like fireworks, ably assisted by Chris Wolstenholme's bulldozing bass lines. Yes, not for the first time this evening, I'm feeling lame for having chosen to sit on my arse at a rock gig. The set contains a couple of clangers, too. 'Explorers', for example, sounds like Thom Yorke in the shower. Perhaps it's no coincidence that the bloke two seats to my left chooses precisely this song to enquire of his friend 'Wil je wat drinken?' at 02:17. It's still unforgivable in the world according to ianmacd, but if you must fetch refreshments, now is indeed the time to do it. 'Madness' is similarly pallid, starting out life as something that sounds as if it may rip off its false beard at any moment and reveal itself to be George Michael's 'Faith'. It does get better as it progresses, but runs out of steam before it can pull itself clear of its own melodramatic mire. Well, let's hope that the lame seated wanker experience was worth it. I certainly enjoyed myself, but how does the recording measure up? The recording is good, but suffers somewhat from my distance to the PA. The vocals are a little low in the mix sometimes, but the guitar comes screaming through with a vengeance. The supercardioid microphones do their work well, cutting through the ambient noise to cleave the meat from the bone. The end result is entirely listenable, but not amongst my best work. A couple of notes on the tracking: It wasn't always obvious how to split this recording. The use of intros absent from the studio versions of the songs they herald, plus new interludes and the difficulty sometimes in distinguishing an interlude from an intro, made tracking the recording a less than straightforward task. In deciding how to go about the job, I consulted band set-lists and looked at how past Muse concerts have typically been tracked by others. I also consulted the band's Web discussion forum. Some people have rendered the intro to 'Hysteria' as its own track, in which case it is typically titled 'Interlude'. The intro tonight is only 45 seconds, however, and does not appear as a separate entity on Muse's own paper set-list, so I have treated it as integral to 'Hysteria'. Track 8 has become known on the Internet during this tour as the 'Montpellier Jam' or, more recently, 'Monty Jam' (after the French city where it was first performed), but this title was coined by a fan and is therefore bogus. I was tempted to leave the piece as an integral part of 'Explorers', since it forms the intro to that song, but due to its length (it's a couple of minutes long) and the fact that it appears on Muse's own set-lists as 'drum and bass solo', I have split it off and used Muse's own description as the title. Similarly, track 17 has been separated, because it features no live music. It is the soundtrack to a video clip of a spinning roulette wheel and is presumably intended to occupy the audience while the band prepare for the next song. It appears on Muse's set-list as 'roulette video moment', so that is the title used here. As always, samples are provided to help you decide whether this is worth the share ratio depletion for you. Muse's return to Amsterdam has already been scheduled. They'll be playing the huge ArenA football stadium on 4th June 2013. That venue seats 50,000 people and it remains to be seen whether even the mighty Muse can fill it. |