It's Muse's biggest test: rocking Madrid just one week after the horrific train bombings. Cue a carnival of giant balloons, Dalek synths and confetti-filled cannons.

The lumbering, five-vehicle Muse tour convoy pulls up outside Madrid's Palacio Vistalegre bullring. It's lunchtime on a sunny Friday but, as the crew begin unloading the tons of steel that power the Muse live juggernaut, the area remains eerily quiet. Shutters are drawn, cafés closed. Only the posters of black anti-terrorist ribbons plastered on doors and windows explain the city's sombre mood.
Muse are the first big band to visit since the Spanish capital was torn apart by seven explosions at nearby Atocha station, plus three elsewhere in the city just eight days ago. Last night they played a rapturously received stadium show in Grenada and fell asleep in their bunks as their tour bus motored north. But, as the trio from Devon amble into the enormous Vistalegre, tonight's task is cast in sharp relief by the first two sights that greet them.
In the Vistalegre's main office, venue staff huddle silently around a TV still relaying footage of last week's atrocity. Muse then pass through the loading corridor that leads to the bullring and run into the local balloon wrangler and his team shouting in Spanish, as they struggle manfully to corral the band's huge white balloons into some kind of order. The band puff out their cheeks. Will Muse's glorious live rock folly help heal the city's wounds, or will they feel welcome as jesters in a wake? Matt Bellamy doesn't consider either role appropriate.
"it's gonna be weird playing here today," he admits, stepping into the vast bullring, as local crew load thousands of small black balloons into a net to be winched toward the ceiling. "Our job's to bring some escapism into the city, though. It'd be crass to make some announcements so we'll just blow up gas canisters, release shit loads of balloons and put as good a show on as possible."
Behind him at the sound desk, meanwhile, the band video coordinator is finalising a tribute to Madrid. He flicks a switch and a black ribbon flutters momentarily across the five screens on stage.

ONLY SIR PAUL McCARTNEY has a more impressive tour diary than Muse inked in for the rest of 2004. Midway through an arena tour witch has so far seen them play to 16,000 in Manchester, 18,000 in Paris and around 8000 anywhere else, they then head to America for a month - the only market yet to fall for their charms - before returning to Europe for appearances at 18 summer festivals, of which 14 are headline shots. Muse are pulling clear in the race for promotion to rock's Champion's League.
Last year's apocalyptic Absolution album has now sold a million worldwide and remains lodged in most European Top 10s. And the best tool the band discovered for marketing it is a stage show of breathtaking theatrical scope.
Each show has seen the production swell to incorporate ever more flamboyant ideas. Three video screens last tour became five this time, while smoke machines have been exponentially souped up and there's a thicker tape-parade, too. But putting on the most razzmatazz live experience since the glory days of Queen's requires serious manpower, and this biggest touring crew yet. Twenty-eight people divided into specialised teams, each wearing colour-coded T-shirts, are directed bye radio from a production nerve centre. Most of the crew's day's begin at 8am with loading into the venue and usually doesn't wind down with a stiff drink until 2am the following morning.
As their crew beaver hectically all around the band, Muse take a moment to appreciate the glorious sweep of the Vistalegre from the very centre of the bullring. Drummer Dom Howard and bassist Chris Wolstenholme gaze up the steep banks of seats towards the arena's space-age glass roof. Matt Bellamy's attention, however, is drawn to the floor of the ring. Evidence of the Vistalegre's usual function is too apparent. Dark red splodges speckle the floor's golden sand.
"Blood," notes Bellamy, walking across the ring across towards the dressing room. "And you can smell the bulls," he adds, pointing down a gloomy passage off the ring towards the stench of cattle. "that's either where they take the carcass or where the bulls wait beforehand. They're probably shitting themselves before a bullfight - especially if they're headlining."
No such pre-match nerves for tonight's headliners. The military precision of their organisation ensures that the trio only have to concern themselves with two daily matters of the tour: make sure they don't fluff their lines onstage, and deciding what to do with the other 22 hours.
"If you get out of your bunk at four, come in the dressing room, slump in the couch, eat a banana, do your gig, have a few drinks and go to bed," explains Bellamy, "then you'll get jaded. We try and do other stuff, too. Like going to the local museum. Or scuba-diving with sharks."
In Australia they recently took the opportunity, while visiting an aquarium, to plunge into a tank with large reef sharks. "Done it in open water too, obviously, but you can only get that close to sharks then. In a tank you can see all their teeth."
His colleagues exchange knowing you-don't-have-to-be-mad-to-work-here glances. Theirs are more straightforward diversions, such as golf or wine tasting. They leave the acts of death-defying to their frontman.
"I did a hammerhead dive in open water, too," Bellamy continues. "That's scary. You go out before dawn and you can't tell which way is up or down. And you can't see much until daybreak, just the odd flash of a fin. Then you look up and see the hammerheads above you silhouetted. It's beautiful."
His eyes light up. "I wonder if we could incorporate it into the gig."

IN THE FUTURE, concerts will be described as "a bit like Muse". Until then, they have the field for themselves.
Standing in the wings shortly before the band take the stage, Bellamy downplays their extravagant show by describing it as merely "three little blokes with a shit-load of gear". In act it's probably the most ambitiously realised gig available, pitched somewhere between thrilling rock-opera and a panoramic IMAX eco-movie. It's the rock concert all pubescent boys dream of performing.
The history of the Milky Way is told on screen between close-up flashes of Bellamy howling hysterically and moon-walking while playing an impossibly elaborate guitar solo. Gas canisters explode while Howard smashes a certain tom. The stage set swifts to allow Wolstenholme a terrifying 10-foot leap from floodlit podium onto his knees. When he's not pirouetting with his guitar, Bellamy is bashing away at The Dalek - a mounted keyboard that lights up as he plays.
"Often they come up with an idea, " Says Tim Cooper, the production manager, "and it's so ridiculous, everyone laughs. But then one of them will go, No, but really. That's how we ended up with the white balloons."
Tonight the mammoth white balloons that bob elegantly through the audience during the elegiac Endlessly are argumented by 2000 black balloons released at the set's close. It's not the first time they've been employed but tonight the seem particularly apt. And Madrid seems to understand.
The venue is only half-full, partly because of recent events but also because today is Father's Day, a national holiday. All the same, 5000 present invest the evening with an aura of delirious abandon.
As the black balloons rain down throughout the bullring and tons of confetti are shot from four cannons for several minutes, the anti-terrorist ribbon is beamed briefly across the screens before the computer crashes and the house lights are tuned on. But the gesture has been noted and the crowd serenade the band with a chorus of "Olé" long after security has asked everyone to leave.
Backstage in the sweaty, jubilant dressing-room, pint glass-sized whisky and Cokes are dispensed and future tour contemplated. Howard would like there to be hydraulics involved one day which would allow the band to levitate above the audience. Dancers are also mentioned. Costumes have not been ruled out.
"I think we could go there quite happily," beams Bellamy, towelling himself down. "I did think of dressing up as a vampire on this tour, with a cape and fangs, and drawing blood from Chris. but that's going too far. For now."
As more drinks are poured, it's decided that nightclubs should also be visited. But, in the boozy fog, only Howard mentions to escape, and while Wolstenholme retires early, Bellamy is left in the tourbus with his current favourite toy, a pack of cards. He's recently become addicted to poker.
"I'm really into the mind games of poker," he explains. "I'm more ruthless than the other two so I've been taking all their money. It can get boring. In Barcelona I had to go to a casino to play with some pros. I still made around 500 euros. You know the Channel 4 poker programme [Late Night Poker]? My ambition is to appear on that. But the stake is £1500 and I'm not quite good enough yet."
As the rest of the crew finish loading the trucks, Bellamy shuffles and deals, shuffles and deals. When Howard returns at 4am, Bellamy is ready to take his money once again and as dawn breaks over Madrid and the bus pulls out of town.

MIDDAY, TWO WEEKS later, and now back in London, Matt Bellamy arrives at a Russian gastro café filled with hip young mums in Hackney's upwardly mobile Broadway Market. It was to this tidy East End café that Muse would retreat last year while writing Absolution in their studio next door. After long hours spent at three laptops in the studio dreaming up ideas for their epic show, they sought sanctuary here - but usually just to clear their heads, not for inspiration. For Muse, the main problem is scaling back ideas, not thinking of them.
It's the end of that area, though. The studio leaseholder is putting the room for sale ("600 grand!" splutters Matt. "Around here!") and Bellamy is considering a move to New York to write the next album from a fresh perspective. He thinks this may be the last time he visits the café, but he's not sentimental. Plans are already afoot to toss Absolution's bombastic prog-goth away.
"I think the combination of guitar rock and full-on '70s disco is ready to be exploited properly," he says. "Like Night Fever, but heavy. Or Billy Jean. A little bit rock guitar, a little bit disco."
But first the US beckons. Absolution was only released there in March and their tour returns them to the clubs for a show that consists a little bit more than amplification. "It won't be like the Wizard Of Oz.," Bellamy laughs. "Pull back the curtain and it's still Muse, maybe even more so.
"For me," he continues, "Muse is about getting the hopes, dreams, desires, frustrations out of your system that you wouldn't normally be able to do. It's about showing people that there are things inside buried that should be exposed, and having no shame about them. We can communicate no matter the environment."
And after their mission to a battered, defiant Madrid, there can be little doubt about that.