Dream Theater

100 points for an album are rarely given by me but ‘Black Clouds & Silver Linings’ by Dream Theater did achieve this rare phenomenom. It’s quite simpleactually, if there is absolutely nothing to bitch about the maximum score is well-deserved. About two weeks before the start of their new European adventure we got the chance for a quick get-together with Jordan Rudess…

By: Winston

Just one month before the release of ‘Black Clouds & Silver Linings’, how do you think the album will be received by the fans?

Well I’m really happy with this album. We put a lot a lot of energy into it, everything went very smooth on all levels, it has a great balance of the various elements in Dream Theater as a band and sound. Sometimes there’s a sort of leaning toward a certain style, this was a rounded experience. I’m proud of the group, what we did together. We tried some new things, like in the middle of ‘The Count Of Tuscany’ where everything kind of breaks down. It’s very open, spacey and organic and I think that we are in a very comfortable place musically. The music seems to happen by itself, a strong point for us as musicians. The fans are very much appreciating the album so far. One thing about a Dream Theater fan is that some like the more metal side of the band or they love the prog side more and it sometimes feels like a war between them. I would love it when both of these fan groups can enjoy it together. This album put the pieces together for them I think.

I understand what you’re saying here, I am familiar with Dream Theater from the very first album (bought right out of the shipping box at the record store in fact) and how the band sounds on the new album is exactly how I like it; both metal and prog. That’s why I gave it the maximum score of 100 points.

Wow, then you’re more familiar with the band than me, hahaha. That’s great to hear, that’s a lot points! This time we went back to the same studio like last time, worked with the same engineer so the situation was very familiar to us. It was a very comfortable environment and we wanted to have that comfort point again. Also technically, with all the gear we have and use. To go into a new place with all that stuff it’s always of going uphill. So we started on good footing and not because we are lazy, the opposite happened, we knew our way around and were able to start work right away. That felt really great. And then it all it kind of happened naturally and everything started to flow… and that helped the album a lot.

The first song on the album, ‘A Nightmare To Remember’…when I first heard it I was going nuts…what a crazy song! How did you do this?

Yeah it is a crazy song with all those different things happening. We wanted to create something dark. The working title for that song was ‘Halloween’ as we were looking for that dark feeling and I brought in all my Mellotron sounds and scary voices. From my own perspective, I was able to use a new instrument called Omnisphere from a company called Spectrasonic and one of the sounds I used is ‘Burning Piano’. I got the programming of the instrument even before it was released, which sometimes happen that way when you are in that business. It actually has the sound of a piano burning; they set it on fire and were able to record the sounds. You can go online and see pictures, look for it on line on Google. Really awesome. The process of songwriting in Dream Theater is different sometimes, we started that song with those dark cord changes. We kind of bounce off of each other which makes us laugh sometimes. For this song it took us some time to find the right dark chords to develop it. We then found the melody that went against it, then we merged all the riffs together which was a hell of job, but it worked out great!