Dream Theater

CDnow is currently taking pre-orders for Dream Theater's upcoming masterpiece, which will be released on Tuesday, October 26th, 1999.

Click here to order the album

Dream Theater's upcoming masterpiece was finished at 2am on August 26th, 1999. The final touches at mastering have been done, and the album was delivered to the record company the following morning. The album is now ready for production, and will be released on October 26th, 1999. Kevin Shirley has been mixing a lot of the songs as well, so the album will contain mixes from both Kevin Shirley and David Bottrill.

Hi all,
We are back from an incredibly exausting trip in & out of Korea for the live debut of "Dream Theater 2000"!
Well, the whole experience was nothing short of unusual....

For starters, this was the very 1st Rock festival EVER in the country of Korea.
(which also made it the "biggest" concert event as well..)
Given the inexperience of handling such an event, we went in expecting the worst of conditions....and we weren't too far off in expectations!!
It was like a war-zone!!!
And to make matters absolutely worse, there was a typhoon that hit on Friday and didn't stop the entire weekend.......EXCEPT for the hour we were on stage!
It was the most bizarre thing!

For the 24 hours leading up to our performance, it was nothing but a giant hurricane...
Most of the bands all throughout the day had to be cancelled...
It finally lets up for a moment, we hit the stage, and it stayed beautiful out the entire time!!! We definately got lucky....
After we finished, Deep Purple hit the stage but the luck ran out and they ended up getting completely poured on!!

Anyways, it was quite a first experience for Jordan and for the fans in Korea!
(I won't even get into that we were plagued with technical problems throughout our set as a result of this chaos...)
There was around 30,000 crazy, screaming Korean fans who loved every minute of the experience regardless of the weather, so I think it was worthwhile...

The set list - for those of you who keep track - was:

Metropolis
Puppies on Acid
Just Let Me Breathe
Hollow Years
Voices
Caught in a Web
Peruvian Skies
Another Day
Pull Me Under

That's right, no new material..... You'll have to keep waiting in suspense!

That's all....it's time for a much-deserved vacation with my family!

Mike Portnoy

PS - Oh yeah....we finally finished up that new album of ours last week! : )

We are 95% finished with the recording process...
(Just a few vocal, guitar & percussion overdubs that still need to go to tape...)

We are scheduled to begin mixing July 15th with David Bottrill (Tool, King Crimson, Peter Gabriel) at Electric Ladyland studios in NYC.

We seem to still be on track for an October-ish release with an extensive World Tour to follow......

Unfortunately, that is all I am prepared to give out just yet....but in the coming weeks (or months) more info will begin to surface....

In other news:

Tomorrow recording begins at Millbrook Studios (home of LTE & Platypus) for my latest side-project with Neal Morse (Spock's Beard), Pete Trewavas (Marillion) and Roine Stolt (Flower Kings).
We are going to try and knock out the writing and basic tracks within this one week as we are booked through to July 6th....

I will keep you guys up to date with the details on this project as they are not "Top Secret" like the new DT!!! : )

Carpe Diem,
Mike Portnoy

Dream Theater will start working on the new studio album this coming week. Writing and recording will begin on Monday, February 8th, 1999, at Bear Tracks Studios in Suffern, New York. Doug Oberkircher will be the engineer. This means the new album will be recorded in the same studio with the same engineer as "Images And Words" and "A Change Of Seasons". "Live at the Marquee" was also mixed in this studio by Doug.

The album will be self-produced (mixer to be announced) and written and recorded spontaniously, much like "Liquid Tension Experiment". The big difference, of course, is that the band will have 2-3 months instead of 1-2 weeks.

Recording will probably last through to May. The band will take March off for the birth of Marlene and Mike Portnoy's son.

The band is very excited to begin the latest chapter of Dream Theater history, "the Jordan era". The album will contain all new and freshly written material.

Dream Theater hopes they will be able to incorporate Metropolis part II. But if they do, it will definately be different from the version they wrote with Derek, because they want to have a fresh start with Jordan.

Dream Theater will be back in the studio in February to work on a new album. None of the "Falling Into Infinity" leftovers will be used, except for possibly Metropolis part II. The band will be writing and recording simultaniously (ala LTE). Unfortunately, Mike's project with Pete Trewavas (Marillion) and Neal Morse (Spock's Beard) has been put on the shelf for the time being.

For the fifth year in a row, Mike Portnoy has won the "Progressive Rock" category of the Modern Drummer Magazine Reader's Poll! This places him on the magazine's Honor Roll. Mike also placed two albums in the "Performance of the Year" category with "Once In A LIVEtime" and "Liquid Tension Experiment". According to Modern Drummer, this is the first time in the history of the magazine that anyone has ever had two albums in this category.

In previous polls, Mike won the "Recorded Performance" category for "Falling Into Infinity", "Awake" and "A Change Of Seasons" and "Up & Coming Drummer" in 1993 for "Images And Words".