The music film, Drones World Tour, which captures the English rock band Muse’s worldwide concert tour spanning 130 shows in Europe, Asia, North and South America, is an audio-visual sensory delight. To the joy of all Muse lovers in the city, the film was screened at INOX (Quest) and INOX (South City) on July 29.

The film starts with footage of band members Matthew Bellamy and Chris Wolstenholme discussing the concept behind the group’s seventh studio album, as well as the tour. Matthew talks about ‘Drones’ being a modern metaphor for what the symbiosis between humanity and technology represents.

True to this, the show starts with the layered, vocals-only title track Drones, which contains the most heavily loaded message of lamenting for the lives lost to attacks facilitated by technology.

The ambience is equal parts eerie and hypnotic with human foetus figures in glass orbs hanging from the high ceilings, and a brilliant display of LED laser lights and a rotating disc with the lyrics of Drones.

Next up is the song which marks the start of the narrative of Drones — Dead Inside, followed by the riff-heavy Psycho.

The snazzy guitar-bass intro of Reapers coupled with Howard Dominic’s pounding drums, and Bellamy’s tapping guitar solo bore testimony to the band’s sheer power in terms of live performance. The stage is a riot of laser lights and colours, as the band launches into the Absolution (album) classic Hysteria. The audience goes wild as Bellamy drops to his knees to belt out a solo.

Bellamy nails the falsetto vocals of The Handler, as lights intersperse with  a montage of images of the audience and artistes. The songs, a melange of electronic sounds and distorted riffs, are nailed to perfection.

Automated drones fly above the auditorium as Bellamy sits at the piano, crooning The Globalist at an almost operatic tenor, after which Howard hits the octopad to Matt’s falsetto. Chris plays the harmonica for Knights of Cydonia, after which the performance comes to a close with Drones being played yet again.

The performance, along with the sound production, lightworks, and the effects of the film drive home the band’s over-arching message emphasising the symbiotic relationship between technology and humanity, resulting in an exciting visual and auditory experience.

Text: Puja Basu

Pictures: Biswajit Kundu