Liquid Tension Experiment 3 liner notes

There are few instances where you really remember listening to a song for the first time – something about the moment, where you were, with whom, or the sheer surprise of what you had just discovered. Hearing the opening notes of Paradigm Shift in 1998 was that kind of experience. Knowing who the musicians were, and already being a fan, had set up the anticipation for something fantastic. But after pressing play on the CD player, I felt compelled to hit the rewind button after only the first 10 seconds. “That couldn’t be right. Let me hear that again.” The mayhem, speed, and insane nature of those thousand notes combining into something this magnificent, immediately established what was to come. From there, the band exploded into the rest of the opening track, delivering as powerful a statement for a new group right off the bat as there could be. And, thus, the journey began into the world of Liquid Tension Experiment.

In modern-day progressive rock, it seems as though there is a new supergroup every few weeks. 20 years ago, this was not the norm; musicians were not routinely involved in more than one band. However, back in 1997, Mike Portnoy (Transatlantic, Sons of Apollo), John Petrucci (Dream Theater), Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater), and Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel), joined forces to create Liquid Tension Experiment, the name perfectly describing their identity: melody (Liquid), power and intensity (Tension), and unbridled spontaneity (Experiment), combining into something equally daring and breathtaking.

The foursome would release their iconic, self-titled debut album in 1998 and the dazzling follow-up, LTE2 in 1999, creating a dynamic, frantic, and inventive sound all their own. Songs like Paradigm Shift, Acid Rain, Universal Mind, and When the Water Breaks would become instant classics in the prog rock world, elevating the already legendary stature of these players.

The incredible creativity within the collective would prompt Petrucci and Portnoy to invite Rudess to join Dream Theater, effectively marking the end of this side project. However, since that time, there have been few reunions more in demand. Now, with the world in lockdown and calendars unexpectedly aligned, the inconceivable has finally happened. In late July 2020, Portnoy, Petrucci, Rudess, and Levin self-quarantined, took the necessary tests, and secretly met up for just over two weeks in a NY studio to work on the album you hold in your hands now... Liquid Tension Experiment 3.

These four musicians had not recorded together in over 20 years. Would the chemistry be the same? According to Mike Portnoy, things fell into place almost immediately. “I think the first thing we did was literally just jammed and improvised the first day. I gotta be honest though, it was a little surreal. I had worked with John a few months ago and I played with [Jordan and Tony] through the years but there was one moment, I got here to the studio and I was standing in the room with Jordan and John and I was like, wait a second, this is the first time the three of us have been in a room together in like over 10 years. It was surreal and then 10 minutes later we’re jamming, and it felt like we hadn’t missed a step at all. It felt like it was exactly where we left off.”

Petrucci had reconnected with Portnoy in early 2020, inviting him to play on his recent solo album, but this was even more special. “Getting a chance to work on this new LTE album was exciting because it allowed us to write together again and be in the same room recording again for the first time in years, alongside Jordan and Tony, and it felt like we hadn’t missed a beat.”

Jordan Rudess agrees, “It felt like a continuation, like we stopped recording LTE2 and walked in a week later we’re doing LTE3. I know it’s amazing to say, but time has passed in a moment, the blink of an eye, the chemistry is the chemistry, and it didn’t change. It was great back then and it still is.”

While it had been over 20 years since they last were in the studio, the way the group works didn’t change. The writing is fast and furious, and it requires you to be on your game, which Tony Levin says works well for these experienced talents. “The speed of learning is very quick and that’s pretty cool, so you can really create a very complex 10-12-15 minute piece in a day and then go to work on fine tuning it.”

The group acknowledge that over the past 20 years, the question of when they would make another album has been the one fans have asked the most. Where circumstances such as touring would intervene in recent years, the lockdown of 2020 would finally create an opportunity, which Portnoy recognized. “We’ve been talking about it obviously for years and you know we’ve all hung out with each other and some of us have played together through the years and there’s always the question when are you going to do LTE again. We have always said we want to; it’s just a matter of the timing and the logistics, so the quarantine actually gave us a window where none of us were on tour. So, it really allowed us to find a scheduling window to be able to finally pull it together. It’s one good thing that the quarantine gave us.” The identity of this group lies in its spontaneity, and it’s on full display on this latest collection.

“I think the unique nature of this specific project is that it is very spontaneously driven,” John Petrucci says. “I think that’s what makes it special. The jams that we did kind of set the mood. In fact, we even picked out of those jams things that we latched on to and combined with whatever ideas Jordan had and whatever I had, with what Tony did, or something that Mike did that might influence something else. What ends up happening is the music has all of our personalities really nicely mixed into this big pot. But it happens so fast. You’re talking like over a few days, not a few weeks and that’s what makes it really special, it’s very spontaneous.”

While each of the 4 members of LTE have been involved in more music over the last 20 years than should be humanly possible, there has always been something special, something unique to this project that has kept fans asking for the group to return. With LTE3 they have overwhelmingly beaten the odds and overcome the passage of time to deliver this album. So press play and get ready for another amazing odyssey .

Roie Avin

The Prog Report

Bonus Disc:

Mike: There were four different jams that we did as a band, each one being about 1/2 hour. Tony and I also did a few hours of jamming, just the two of us, to come up with the duet, and we also have a lot left-over from that. The bonus disc is comprised of a bunch of excerpts from these jams. It’s always been a big part of what LTE does, so this time around, rather than having them interspersed in the main album, it’s all on the bonus this by itself.

Hypersonic

(Song #4 – written July 29th – 31st, 2020)

Mike: Hypersonic was the last song we composed of the four new compositions. We knew we needed an opener that was just going to take peoples’ heads off from the minute you hit play. Paradigm Shift opens with this 5 second run that just punches you in the face. This time around we open with a 30 second run before we even settle into the main riff and groove. It was absolutely designed that way and to me it’s kind of a cross between Acid Rain and Paradigm Shift mixed with a lot of The Dance of Eternity kind of insanity. We purposely threw everything including the kitchen sink into that one.

John: As we were putting the album together, we all felt that there needed to be a track that had some chops and speed and that frantic nervous energy that a song like Paradigm Shift from the first LTE album or Acid Rain from LTE2 had – something heavy and full of energy. This song definitely checks off that box. There are a lot of intricate, full-band unison moments where the challenge is to be as locked as possible and I think those types of passages on this song are a testament of how well we work together. This song really reflects the personalities of all four of us and has a lot of very musical, as well as quirky moments, that just make it a very fun ride.

Jordan: I remember how this one started – Petrucci head down at the guitar bringing this crazy riff to life, and things proceeding with great inspiration after that. Sometimes inspiration takes you on a ride and the whole chromatic moving section with chordal variation rushed out of all of us. The writing sessions are almost funny sometimes because of the speed that we are working at, trying to keep up with the crazy ideas that keep coming. I am often seen writing notation in my book – sometimes writing while the other guys are working something else out, or even transcribing some wild Petrucci or Levin thing. This piece also features a totally written counterpoint section at 4:10. Add some mad unisons and some Levin inspired, Zappa-like madness and you have a tune called Hypersonic.

Tony: Time to get busy. I think I heard the guys saying, “let’s get more nuts with the opening riffs than we did on the previous albums”. For me it’s time to pull out the Stick – the only way I have a chance to keep up. Our usual plan is enacted here – blazing fast sections lead to melodic areas you want to sing along with but can’t because there are so many twists and turns. Fiery guitar solo comes in and it feels like things can’t get any more intense, and then Jordan takes over with some lines you couldn’t have imagined.

Beating The Odds

(Song #2 – written July 25th, 2020)

John: This was a riff that I brought into the sessions that I thought was interesting because it’s in an odd time and phrased in a way that is hard to wrap your head around at first until you understand where the groove is. When I first presented it to the guys, their initial reaction was “how are you feeling that?” When the band enters after the opening riff it probably sounds a little “odd” because the time signature is a bit unclear until the song gets going. If LTE ever had a “prog pop hit” this would be it!

Mike: That was the 2nd song we wrote. We called it ‘‘the feel-good song of the pandemic” (laugh). The opening riff was something that John brought in and it took us the longest time to even feel where the downbeat was. it’s so confusing until the drums kick in you can figure out what the hell’s going on. The chorus has a great release, it’s a soaring melody and then we revisit it at the end at a much slower tempo and it’s really very majestic.

Jordan: I remember the look of confusion on ALL our faces when JP started playing that opening riff! It was seemingly so straight ahead but with a bizarre rhythmic twist! Took a while to internalize that but then we all loved it! After we established it, I wrote the counter line that the keyboard plays and then the guitar. One of the things I wanted to bring to this LTE album was the grand melodic moments that we had on our first albums. A real example of that being the section at 1:31 with the soaring guitar melody over those chords! I always love the Levin way of connecting chords. Always cool and never ordinary!

So much fun to blow leads over the middle section. I basically went nuts and just let the recording roll. One of the great things about LTE is the fact that we just let ourselves loose and have FUN!

Tony: Starts with an off-step riff, kind of like walking upstairs backward, but at the repeat you get it. Then it opens up into “anthem land.” Later there are unison bass lines where both Jordan and John got flangy sounds that work well with the bass. Mike’s unstoppable energy is evident here, and we’ve got more fantastic J&J solos. At only five and a half minutes we start fading out... a short song by our standards. But we’re just getting warmed up.

Liquid Evolution

(excerpt from Band Jam #4 – July 29th, 2020)

Tony: After a day’s work, what’s sometimes called for is to settle into a little jam, start tape rolling and see where it goes. I thought the NS Electric Upright would make a nice change of tone from the other pieces.

Jordan: On this improvised piece, my objective was to get a marimba/synth type sound but with a unique flavor to it and with an organic feel. I ended up combining some software (Native Instruments) virtual instrument sounds with the Korg Kronos. The sound helped to inspire the note choices and the rest just flowed.

Mike: It’s the only true band improv on the main album and actually it started with just myself, Tony and Jordan jamming. The name of the patch on Jordan’s keyboard was called “Liquid Evolution”, so once we had this jam based around that sound, we knew that this had to be the song title as well. John went back and created a guitar part to it which is something similar we did on LTE2 during the sessions.

John: LTE improvisations can go on for over 30 minutes. We’ll just jam and jam until we naturally come to an end and then while enjoying one of Tony’s famous espressos, we listen to it and potentially pull ideas that can turn into a song. In the case of Liquid Evolution that’s actually the first four or five minutes from one of the jams that the guys started, which I then improvised over. I love this side of Tony’s playing and that vibe that he brings to this track.

The Passage Of Time

(Song #1 – written July 23rd-24th, 2020)

Jordan: This song has so many of the compositional techniques that really started out when LTE first began many years ago. Things like taking a riff that starts out in the lower register and then moving it to the top and putting chords and bass notes below it. Also, an LTE/DT favorite is having a section that shifts meters between two different rhythmical meters like the melodic section at two minutes that is constantly shifting between bars of 5/8 and 6/8.

Often when I record leads, I’ll either get something I like on the very first take or if not – it will take a while longer to find something I’m comfortable with. On this album most all the leads were first takes, like the keyboard solo in this song!

John: This was the first song we worked on and when it was done, we all knew once again how amazing it was to be working together. We knew we were on to something and that this was going to be a really amazing album. Nothing about the passage of over two decades could’ve done anything to change that. For this entire record, I used my Ernie Ball Music Man Majesty guitar through my Mesa Boogie JP-2C amplifier, and I couldn’t be happier with the guitar tones that Jimmy T achieved on this album. To me this song truly reflects the collaborative songwriting efforts of all four of us. One of my favorite moments is the absolutely incredible drum soloing that Mike does on the outro of the song.

Mike: It had been 22 years since the four of us had written together and over 10 years since the three of us had written together so we kind of wanted to mark the title with something having to do with time, but it also applies to time signatures. It’s a great marker of the first thing we wrote together. However, we didn’t write it from the beginning. Technically, the very first thing we started with was the verse section beginning around the 2-minute mark, and then when we finished the song we went back and wrote a more rockin’ intro to start the song.

Tony: I played bass and Stick on this. It’s big, melodic, right in the style that’s LTE. For me, a lot of unison lines but sometimes there are openings for different parts. The song has a lot of time changes, but they’re organic, so I hardly noticed what they are. There are striking keyboard and guitar solos, then a big ending where I could bring in some sub stuff.

Chris & Kevin’s Amazing Odyssey

(excerpt from MP and TL Jam – July 28th, 2020)

Tony: Mike and I were left alone in the studio, we played long into the night. Pulled out the bow and things got spooky for a bit. Frankly I was leaving space for J&J to maybe add something – we decided to leave it as is.

Mike: When we were doing the photo shoot for the first album, for some reason the photographer kept referring to me and Tony incorrectly as “Chris and Kevin,” so we decided to call our duet on the first album Chris & Kevin’s Excellent Adventure. Then, from the second album’s sessions, we released a trio jam disc titled Liquid Trio Experiment Spontaneous Combustion where we had a track called Chris and Kevin’s Bogus Journey (both being a parody of the Bill & Ted films), and so, of course, this time we had to complete the trilogy with Chris and Kevin’s Amazing Odyssey. Tony’s playing an upright bass with but with a bow, so it almost sounds like he’s playing cello, and it’s just this really evil, dark, sinister sound he’s getting out of that thing. It’s just a moment of improv between the 2 of us just getting real down and dirty and ugly.

Rhapsody In Blue

Mike: We played this live on the tour we did back in 2008. I always wanted to cover Rhapsody in Blue and when preparing for the 2008 tour, I thought LTE would be the perfect outlet to finally work up a cool arrangement of it. As we only played a limited amount of shows on that 2008 tour and the previously released live versions were very limited as well, I suggested to the guys we revisit it again and finally do a studio recording of it to give it it’s proper day in the sun.

Jordan: This was a grand undertaking. We had played this live so many years ago. I had to go in a re-learn the piece and really re-orchestrate it as well, since the last time we did it was a different approach on instruments I no longer use!! The orchestration to this was a sonic party for me. I wanted to use my synthesizers and sonic palette to make it very colorful, playful and dramatic but also rock. Mike really put a lot of his energy into wanting to make this happen, which I’m grateful for, because honestly this was a ton of work and it would have been kinda easy to not take this on!! I remember looking at the music for this after so many years and being a little overwhelmed as if I hadn’t ever played it before! Very proud of the way it turned out!!

Tony: My favorite piece on the album – to begin with, who doesn’t like the Gershwin piece! But I felt we took it in just about every direction it could go, and still kept the majesty of the composition. Nice to have a chance to play the top, guitar side of the Stick. In the live version I’d done the opening on the bass side an octave lower. Still won’t convince anyone it’s a clarinet, but it was fun.

John: It was so cool that Mike had the idea for us to do a cover of this song and I love how all the guys handled the arrangement in their own unique way. When we played it live on tour many years ago, it was such a highlight of the show, so I’m really glad that we had the opportunity to record a studio version for the album. It’s such a classic and recognizable Gershwin piece but when I listen to our version amongst the other songs on the album, it just fits in so perfectly. This is one of my favorite moments on the record.

Shades Of Hope

(JP and JR Duet, written and recorded on Aug 5th, 2020)

John: In the tradition of the guitar and piano duets from the first two albums, to me this song provides a beautiful and much needed respite from the instrumental madness that dominates the rest of the album. It originally stemmed from a really gorgeous piece of music that Jordan came in with and I remember hearing it and saying to him that we absolutely needed to save that for our duet. The musical and compositional chemistry that we have together is so incredible and I think that it’s evident on this piece just as much as it was when we wrote State of Grace for the first LTE album. The version here is the very first live take that we did immediately after writing it. I just love how effortlessly and organically this song came together.

Jordan: I love this music making mode that JP and I get into and was excited about doing a follow up to songs like Hourglass and State of Grace from our previous LTE albums. We had a theme that we were very inspired to make use of and when we sat down in the studio together it all came together rather quickly and with a rush of inspiration. We dimmed the lights, hit the record button and played!! Me looking at the scribbles from my notation as we were writing the song and JP using his uncanny memory.

Key To The Imagination

(Song #3 – Written July 27th-28th, 2020)

Mike: It’s the epic on the album at about 13 minutes. It’s got a little bit of everything. I think it’s probably the most Dream Theater-esque. The middle has these kind of really Egyptian or European tonalities and it has this really cool open jam in the middle, and then the big soaring finale with a lot of twists and turns, melodically and thematically. It’s a great closer to the album.

Jordan: A lot of LTE music is written in the room with the guys, while some parts are brought in. The riff that the bass introduces after the whole melodic beginning section is one that popped into my head. Another seemingly simple riff in 5. For a moment, it had us scratching our heads because of the unusual feel of it but then we fell into its groove. We use a lot of compositional techniques in LTE and that always keeps things interesting, like taking something melodic that was written on piano and then turning it into something really heavy like the riff at 2:10. We use that movement in a lot of different ways. In this tune, the Levin bass monster gets uncaged and that’s always a treat.

Things switch from prog to more of a world music vibe around the 7:56 mark. With our international fans it’s always nice to tip the hat to other cultures! With all the prog madness within this song, I think that it is the soaring melodic element that will resonate with everyone the most.

Tony: I like featuring Jordan at the top. It gets a little bluesy, with the bass taking the melody for a bit – then, love a piece with a lot of B, and this one lives there – a low bass line with some fingernail funk sets up this section. Then the full band gets steaming – we’re back!

A lot of sections in this one – playing it live will be a memory test for sure. There’s a little bass solo where I dug out an evil sounding pedal that had been too extreme for most of the recording I do. Fit perfectly! Got the Funk Fingers in during the keyboard and guitar solos. Third song written for the album – 13 minutes or so – and we’re into our stride! There’s a big anthem section – a good place to thank the mixing and recording engineers who worked with us – it’s not easy to keep things in hand when there’s such a big sonic range.

John: This is the only song on the record that I used my Ernie Ball Music Man Majesty 7-string guitar on, so it naturally has a bigger and heavier sound to it. The opening guitar melody is something that I had improvised during the writing sessions and thought worked so well, that I decided to keep the performance on the record. Whenever I am tracking final guitars, I always try to develop the musical ideas that were created upon inception a little further in an effort to hopefully take the song to the next level. There is a really cool moment in this song where I took one of the riffs that stemmed from a band improvisation and rearranged it for what I thought was a pretty cool and interesting result. One of my favorite and most satisfying things to do is to play soaring melodies over epic chord progressions that help push the song over the finish line. The ending of this piece is the ultimate example of that. On a funny note, we like to give the songs temporary working titles, and this one was called “Epic Fail!”