New video! Friops has just released the video for a cover of Muse’s Won’t Stand Down, to which I had the honor of contributing, as Producer for the music and Director for the video!

Muse has been one of the best-known rock bands since the 2000s. One of the reasons for their renown is their members’ constant willingness to experiment, both musically and sonically. They’re the perfect band to do a full cover (you have to redo all the instruments and the mix in the spirit of the original song), and learn a lot in the process!

When we started prospecting into their discography, we first looked at the iconic Knights of Cydonia song, which was featured in the Guitar Hero 3 music games and in Rocksmith, and is therefore by far the Muse track we’ve listened to the most. But in the end, we chose one of their last single, which has some in some tracks a nice modern metal sound, with big, angry guitar tones, big drums, and even a bit of screaming from singer Matthew Bellamy, for whom we were just discovering this vocal register. This track Won’t Stand Down surely surprised more than one fan when it was released two years ago (at least, it surprised us)!

Since it’s a full cover, all the music sounds were redone by us, including guitars, bass (done by Friops), and vocals, brilliantly performed by our friend André’e from Ana t’Aime, whom I helped record, and whose devotion we salute, given that he even took a singing course especially to work on this track!) etc… A real challenge, which we started two months ago. Friops had done at least 80% of the track in two days, which motivates us to see the project through to the end.

I’m credited as Producer for the Music, as I contributed to the recording, mixing and overall mastering, and in particular to the sound design of the verse bass, which was quite a challenge of sound experimentation, as you’d expect from a Muse cover!

You can read Friops article to find out more about the song’s musical production.

For the video, as usual, we wanted to take inspiration from the original music video. However, we couldn’t afford to do make-up as advanced as in the video, nor to have a cohort of men in black, nor to have such a vast set. So we improved on the spot with what we had. For example, I suggested we have the fireplace in the background to evoke the power status of the main character, evoked in the clip (in a completely different way). It was also with this idea in mind that we chose to place the singer on a beautiful armchair, instead of a wheelchair (more difficult to find anyway). There’s no playback in the original clip, just story-telling, but we wanted to do it, because it’s fun, and it reinforces the idea that we re-recorded the song. So it was the white-clad character, central to the original clip, who took on the role of singer. As for the guitarist, Friops, he would take on the role of one of the black-clad “henchmen” under “mind control”.

Since we were filming in a single location, the same place where we had filmed our cover of Betraying te Martyrs, I had programmed an entire light show in REAPER. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that I’d invested in some new portable lamp stands, that can go up particularly high, to test a different placement of Led tubes than we usually do: so they’re up high, horizontally, rather than halfway up vertically.

On location, our usual chief operator, Henri, had to leave, as we’d already used up a good part of the evening filming another video for Friops (story for another day!). So it was up to me, assisted by Sanyzia on the smoke and Monsieur X on the PC, to take the camera for this cover! Following the chaotic movements of André’e and Friops’ wild performances was particularly fun (and a bit tricky for the auto focus). 😉

The editing had a real challenge, though! Too focused on the camera-focus and framing of these improvised dances, I hadn’t noticed that the light and music synchro was off at the start of our first takes, right up to the second verse. Frustrating, given that we didn’t have that many takes either! I managed to make up for it in the editing and color-grading, with 3 days of editing, it is far less noticeable now if you don’t know what to look for. Phew!

I hope you enjoyed the result, both sound and video. Now that we’ve met this challenge, you can expect to see more full-cover-music-video from us in the future! 😎

See ya! 🤘

More infos on:

• MUSE- Won’t Stand Down (Full Band Cover) – fxdesnos.com: Friops article about the project