Guy Berryman: Mylo Xyloto means 'everything and nothing to everybody and nobody'

As announced on the official site today, on 31 October, Coldplay are performing a special, intimate gig at la Cigale in Paris for Orange/NRJ. For those of you in France, there is a contest to win tickets at coldplay.orange.fr - NRJ will also be giving away tickets on air from 10 October. You can read more discussion on this new event at the Coldplay Live forum now.

In addition there were four short videos to watch when the news was announced. You can download the lot at the Multimedia forum now. In them, Coldplay again talked about working with Brian Eno, their influences during the making of the fifth album, and who or what Mylo Xyloto was... read on for the best transcripted parts... [thanks _Tash & zzz]

Chris on Mylo Xyloto: "At the moment that title, 'Mylo Xyloto' seems ridiculous and strange. We wanted, when you typed it into Google to get no other hits about anything except that album."

Will on the recording process: "Sometimes a song will just arrive. Chris will come in and ask 'what do you think?' So we play it and within three days its finished. Quick and easy. Other times it takes forever, we start over-analysing it, and start to get too involved it it, changing the tempo by tiny amounts, changing the structure or write a new verse. The song Charlie Brown has been around for about 3 years...

[Right: looks like nearly 32% of you were right - Mylo Xyloto is a 'Who' according to Guy Berryman]

Guy on Mylo Xyloto: "It means everything and it means nothing to everybody and nobody. Decipher that one! The name Mylo Xyloto came from a phase of the album during which we were creating the music which was intended to be a soundtrack. We were going to make an animated film which had a narrative, it had characters. Mylo Xyloto was sort of the main character. "

Guy on Brian Eno: "Brian's role was slightly different on this album than it was on Viva la Vida in the sense in that he wasn't there that much, but when he did come in he would be involved in the beginning of a song. He was really writing with us and playing instruments and giving us ideas and suggestions as to how we can try and make a song different from what we've done before."

Chris on Brian Eno: "It becomes very strange atmospherically. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad. Then free painting. Sometimes bits of that get put into songs. But he always loves to stand and play in the room together like an old fashioned group. He never makes a song worse, he always improves the song by adding a little part of changing the structure or something. He's got a magic touch, and we're very grateful to be able to work with him."

Jonny on Brian Eno: "I doubt he'd want to join our band, but maybe we'd be grateful if he'd come and hang out once every year or something."

Guy on musical influences: "We've made four albums now, and making the fifth album (or making any album) we don't really want to repeat any ideas that we have had on previous albums so we're looking at hip-hop ideas, dance music and lots of other different kinds of music to get ideas from."

Jonny on musical influences: "We go from listening to Hungarian throat-singers to some kind of nose-flute. We were just totally free to play each other music. Brian would come in an play lots of old barber shop records - he's really into the 50's barber shop thing."

Chris on musical influences: "We're fans of all types of good music. The great thing about the internet is that you can listen to anything and there's no 'tribes' any more. You don't have to be just a goth or just into Jazz or Mozart. You can listen to goth-jazz-Mozart. Any time. And so we felt like it was okay to show all of our influences in the way we are working now. So if there's a bit of hip-hop that means we like some hip-hop! We just feel that we have nothing to lose as a band so it was nice to just feel free, and I don't know if it's [Mylo Xyloto] commercial or if it's good, or anything, but it's full of love and passion."

New photos of Coldplay @ Rock In Rio festival, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil (1st October 2011):