Liquid Tension Experiment (LTE) is an American instrumental

progressive metal Progressive metal (sometimes shortened to prog metal) is a broad fusion music genre melding heavy metal and progressive rock, combining the loud "aggression" and amplified guitar-driven sound of the former with the more experimental, cerebral ...

supergroup, founded by

Mike Portnoy Michael Stephen Portnoy (born April 20, 1967) is an American musician who is primarily known as the former drummer, backing vocalist, and co-founder of the progressive metal band Dream Theater. In September 2010, Portnoy announced his departure ...

, then

Dream Theater Dream Theater is an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Petrucci, John Myung and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. They subsequently dropped out o ...

's drummer, in 1997. The band has released two albums through Magna Carta Records. A third album, with the absence of

John Petrucci John Peter Petrucci (born July 12, 1967) is an American guitarist, best known as a founding member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater. He produced or co-produced (often with former member Mike Portnoy before he departed the band in 201 ...

was released in 2007 under the name "Liquid Trio Experiment". A live album with the absence of Jordan Rudess (mostly) was released in 2009 under the name "Liquid Trio Experiment 2". Three live albums and two videos were released in 2009 by the complete band. Active up until 1999, when

Jordan Rudess Jordan Rudess (born Jordan Charles Rudes; November 4, 1956) is an American musician, software developer and composer best known as a member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater and the progressive metal supergroup Liquid Tension Experi ...

formally joined Dream Theater, the band reunited in 2008 for a series of live shows, and eventually reconvened in 2020 to record a third studio album featuring all members of the band, which was released on April 16, 2021.

History

Formation, studio albums and tours

Liquid Tension Experiment was formed by former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy after

Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter of Freedoms"), commonly called (also ''Magna Charta''; "Great Charter"), is a royal charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by t ...

gave him the green light for "whatever he wanted to do". Portnoy first invited keyboardist

and progressive rock icon

Tony Levin Anthony Frederick Levin (born June 6, 1946) is an American musician and composer, specializing in electric bass, Chapman Stick and upright bass. He also sings and plays synthesizer. Levin is best known for his work with King Crimson (since 1 ...

(bass,

Chapman Stick The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and is used to play bass lines, melody lines ...

) of

King Crimson King Crimson are a progressive rock band formed in 1968 in London, England. The band draws inspiration from a wide variety of music, incorporating elements of classical, jazz, folk, heavy metal, gamelan, industrial, electronic, experime ...

and

Peter Gabriel Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and activist. He rose to fame as the original lead singer of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving Genesis in 1975, he launched ...

's band to join him. Portnoy also had bassist Billy Sheehan and keyboardist Jens Johansson on his shortlist. In his instructional video "Liquid Drum Theater", Portnoy said that his first choice for the guitar was Dimebag Darrell, but he was unable to join because of conflicting schedules. Two other primary choices,

Steve Morse Steve J. Morse (born July 28, 1954) is an American guitarist, best known as the founder of the Dixie Dregs and as the lead guitarist of Deep Purple from 1994 to 2022. Morse has also enjoyed a successful solo career and was briefly a member of ...

(

Dixie Dregs The Dixie Dregs is an American rock band from Augusta, Georgia. Formed in 1970, the band's performance consists entirely of instrumentals that fuse elements of diverse genres such as rock, classical music, country, jazz and bluegrass into an e ...

Kansas Kansas () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its Capital city, capital is Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita, Kansas, Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebras ...

Deep Purple Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in London in 1968. They are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock music, but their musical style has changed over the course of its existence. Originally formed as ...

) and

Jim Matheos Jim Matheos (born November 22, 1962) is an American guitarist and the primary songwriter for the progressive metal band Fates Warning, in which he has been the only consistent member since the group's beginning. Matheos also plays in OSI along ...

(

Fates Warning Fates Warning is an American progressive metal band, formed in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1982 by vocalist John Arch, guitarists Jim Matheos and Victor Arduini, bassist Joe DiBiase, and drummer Steve Zimmerman. There have been numerous lineup ...

) were also unavailable. Portnoy then turned to fellow Dream Theater member

to fill the position (despite initially wanting to keep the project completely separate from Dream Theater). The combo was formed as a side project to

in 1997. Both Mike and John confirmed on the 5 Years in a Livetime DVD commentary, that Rudess was asked to join Dream Theater largely because of the success of Liquid Tension Experiment, and the chemistry of the three working together. Rudess had previously declined to join Dream Theater in 1994 and instead became a member of the

, known for complex, "Southern fusion" instrumental music. Liquid Tension Experiment released two albums, '' Liquid Tension Experiment'' (1998) and '' Liquid Tension Experiment 2'' (1999) on Magna Carta Records. They also played a few live shows in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and London. Mike Portnoy had stated in numerous interviews (and on hi
web site FAQ
that there would not be a third LTE album, as three of the four band members were also part of Dream Theater and the material would be too similar. In 2007 however, he said that a third release is possible, but that his problems with the Magna Carta label are more of an obstacle than getting the band members together to record. A situation that had to do with the company that released the Liquid Drum Theater VHS tape using video footage of Liquid Tension Experiment in the studio without getting the required permission of Magna Carta. Mike Portnoy came back to Magna Carta in 2007 to release Liquid Trio Experiment's "Spontaneous Combustion" Sessions. Several songs and

riff A riff is a repeated chord progression or refrain in music (also known as an ostinato figure in classical music); it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or acc ...

s from the project have been incorporated into Dream Theater's live performances, such as " Instrumedley" from '' Live at Budokan'', which includes excerpts of the songs "Paradigm Shift" and "Universal Mind." On October 4, 2007, it was announced that LTE would headline NEARfest 2008 in June. On March 29, 2008, six Liquid Tension Experiment tour dates in June 2008 were announced to celebrate the bands 10 year anniversary as well to create a "whole new musical experiment". Liquid Tension Experiment released a multi-disc boxed set of tour highlights from their 2008 tour, including complete shows from New York and Los Angeles on DVD and CD (the L.A. show also on Blu-ray), the Liquid Trio Experiment 2 recording from Chicago (q.v. below), and a disc of improvisations from other shows on the tour. The New York and Los Angeles shows were also released separately on CD or DVD, all through Dream Theater's official bootlegs website, YtseJam Records' subsidiary, Lazy Tomato Entertainment.

Liquid Trio Experiment

During the recording sessions for their second album, John Petrucci had to leave when his wife went into premature labor. During that period, the remaining members, who still had studio time booked, continued to write music in improvisation. On October 23, 2007, a compilation of jams from those sessions was released under the name of ''Liquid Trio Experiment''. The album, called ''

Spontaneous Combustion Spontaneous combustion or spontaneous ignition is a type of combustion which occurs by self-heating (increase in temperature due to exothermic internal reactions), followed by thermal runaway (self heating which rapidly accelerates to high te ...

'', was recorded from Mike Portnoy's DATs of the sessions because the original master tapes disappeared before the mixing stage. A few songs from Liquid Tension Experiment 2 were spawned from these jam sessions, including "914", "Chewbacca", and "Liquid Dreams".

Liquid Trio Experiment 2

The second incarnation of Liquid Trio Experiment happened unexpectedly while playing a concert in

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on June 25, 2008. In the beginning of their set, Jordan Rudess' keyboard started playing two adjacent notes on every keypress. At the end of playing "Universal Mind", he went off stage to talk to the tech crew to see if it could be fixed. In the meantime, the other three musicians on stage continued to play, improvising for what turned out to be the rest of the concert. Rudess was on the phone with

Roland Roland (; frk, *Hrōþiland; lat-med, Hruodlandus or ''Rotholandus''; it, Orlando or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the ...

for most of the time, and finally realized the keyboard was unfixable in that time, so he came onstage and took Petrucci's guitar to jam with the band. Petrucci took Levin's bass, and Levin joined in on

. Toward the end of the show, Charlie Benante from the band

Anthrax Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Bacillus anthracis''. It can occur in four forms: skin, lungs, intestinal, and injection. Symptom onset occurs between one day and more than two months after the infection is contracted. The s ...

came and played drums while Portnoy played bass. This entire improvised concert was released in 2009 as '' When the Keyboard Breaks: Live in Chicago''.

Interim period

On July 19, 2012, at Dream Theater's second show on Huntington NY, Tony Levin joined Petrucci, Rudess and Mike Mangini (Dream Theater's current drummer) onstage to perform "Paradigm Shift." Later in 2012, Portnoy performed "Acid Rain" live with PSMS, his band with

Derek Sherinian Derek Sherinian (born August 25, 1966) is an American keyboardist who has toured and recorded for Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, and Joe Bonamassa, among others. He was also a member of Dream Theater from 1994 to 1999, is the founder of Planet X an ...

, Tony MacAlpine and Billy Sheehan. They recorded a live DVD in Tokyo including the song. On February 10, 2017,

and

reunited on stage in Tampa, FL to perform Paradigm Shift, Acid Rain and Universal Mind. They were accompanied by members of progressive metal group Haken. In April 2019, both

and

announced that a new Liquid Tension Experiment reunion is possible, once all involved musicians find time for that. In May 2020,

posted a video to the website Cameo stating, in response to a fan's question, that the prospect of Liquid Tension Experiment reuniting "looks very good", with the only barrier being the band members' schedules.

Reunion and ''Liquid Tension Experiment 3''

On December 14, 2020, Levin, Portnoy, Rudess and Petrucci released a series of posts on social media (pictures of themselves wearing surgical masks spelling out "LTE 3") teasing a third Liquid Tension Experiment album; a picture of the four of them together with the same masks was posted the following day. On December 17, 2020, it was formally announced that '' Liquid Tension Experiment 3'' would be released by Inside Out Music on March 26, 2021. The album was ultimately released April 16, 2021; the delay was due to printing errors by the manufacturer. A video for the song "The Passage of Time" was released on January 22, 2021. This was followed up by a video for the song "Beating the Odds" on February 26, 2021, and then by a video for the song "Hypersonic" on March 24, 2021. In an interview for ''Revolver'' magazine, Portnoy revealed the group had signed a two-album deal with InsideOut, and humorously added that a fourth Liquid Tension Experiment album would probably not take another 20 years.

Band members

Liquid Tension Experiment

–

, bass guitar, electric upright bass *

– guitar *

– drums, percussion *

– keyboards

Liquid Trio Experiment

* Tony Levin – Chapman Stick, bass guitar * Mike Portnoy – drums, percussion * Jordan Rudess – keyboards

Liquid Trio Experiment 2

* Tony Levin – Chapman Stick, bass guitar * John Petrucci – guitar * Mike Portnoy – drums, percussion * Jordan Rudess – keyboards

Discography

Liquid Tension Experiment

Studio albums

Live albums

Liquid Trio Experiment

Liquid Trio Experiment 2

References

{{Authority control American progressive metal musical groups Heavy metal supergroups American instrumental musical groups Musical groups established in 1997 Musical groups disestablished in 1999 Musical groups reestablished in 2008 Musical groups disestablished in 2008 Musical groups reestablished in 2020 Progressive rock musical groups from New York (state) Dream Theater 1997 establishments in New York City Heavy metal musical groups from New York (state) 2008 disestablishments in New York (state) Magna Carta Records artists

History

Formation, studio albums and tours

Liquid Trio Experiment

Liquid Trio Experiment 2

Interim period

Reunion and ''Liquid Tension Experiment 3''

Band members

Liquid Tension Experiment

Liquid Trio Experiment

Liquid Trio Experiment 2

Discography

Liquid Tension Experiment

Studio albums

Live albums

Liquid Trio Experiment

Liquid Trio Experiment 2

See also

References