Muse’s Matt Bellamy has scored a new audiobook of ‘1984’ – starring Andrew Garfield

9 January, 2024

Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri at Abbey Road. Credit PRESS

Muse‘s Matt Bellamy has announced that he has scored a new audiobook of 1984 – starring Andrew Garfield.

George Orwell’s famed dystopian novel 1984 will be getting a new dramatization as an Audible original. The audiobook narration will be done by actors Garfield, Cynthia Ervio, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy. It is set to be released on April 4 and is available for pre-order here.

Bellamy took to his official X/Twitter page to tweet about the new dramatisation of the novel and shared that he and award-winning British composer, Ilan Henry Eshkeri created the audiobook’s original score.

“Original music score by myself and @ilaneshkeri and recorded with the one and only London Metropolitan Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios,” read his tweet.

This is not the first time Bellamy has mentioned has interacted with Orwell’s novel. Back in 2009, Muse cited the book as a major influence for the creating of their fifth album ‘The Resistance’.

Speaking to Radio 1’s Zane Lowe at the time (via BBC), Bellamy shared how he reread the book shortly before writing the band’s new material and said: “When I read it this time I was much more taken with the love story.”

He continued: “I read once in school about 15 years ago it was all about the politics. But when I read it this time I was much more taken with the love story in the book between Juliette and Winston.”

In 2017, Bellamy compared Trump’s America to Orwell’s 1984. At the time, he took to Twitter to write: “The end of US global hegemony begins. Authoritarianism/statism will now rise as democracy declines. Beware #1984 #unitedstatesofeurasia“. He also wrote in a separate tweet: “Orwell was out by 100 years. Here is the world in 2084.”

Elsewhere, last year the frontman smashed his guitar and gifted it to fan at Muse’s gig at The O2.

According to NME writer Ali Shutler, who was at the concert, Bellamy gifted the smashed guitar to a fan who was holding up a sign saying that they’d seen Muse live 225 times.

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