Dream Theater's first album with new vocalist James LaBrie is an excellent mix of progressive metal stylings with heartfelt vocals and thought-provoking lyrics. Guitarist John Petrucci, bassist John Myung, and drummer Mike Portnoy, all of whom trained at Berklee, show impressive ability on their respective instruments. Kevin Moore's keyboards ...
The members of Tangerine Dream continued to hone their craft as pioneers of the early days of electronica, and the mid-'70s proved to be a time of prosperity and musical growth for the trio of Chris Franke, early member Peter Baumann, and permanent frontman Edgar Froese. The three of them had been delivering mysterious space records on a regular ...
A Change of Seasons is a strange disc. There are only five tracks but with a total time that approaches an hour anyway. The first track, the 23-minute, seven-part epic "A Change of Seasons," is one of the most impressive pieces of music ever written in the progressive metal vein. With the same heavy sound that marked Awake, but with many other ...
Few bands in the history of rock have warranted the "either you love them or hate them" tag as much as Dream Theater, as fanatics consider them musical geniuses, while detractors sneer at their bombast. Either way, there's no arguing that the group has built a large and loyal following over the years by doing things their way, and with little to ...
The godfathers of progressive metal have been amazing and delighting their dedicated fans since the late '80s. Throughout their impressive and unlikely career they have continued to push themselves and the genre into new and challenging directions. While arguably hitting their peak with 1994's Awake, the band continued to grow with each new ...
Prog rockers Dream Theater tallied 19 years as a band with the release of Octavarium, but in listening you're apt to suspect otherwise. As a collective they remain as tight as they were on 2003's obsessively dark Train of Thought (like all music-school outfits, they've exacted an all-for-one formula that doesn't allow a single player more than his ...
Dream Theater is almost aggressively out of fashion in 1999. Few bands subscribe to their dense blend of progressive rock and post-Halen metal, and those that do usually don't have major-label contracts, the way Dream Theater does. There was a point where they tried to straighten out their sound somewhat, as they flirted with straight-ahead, laid ...
Three years after Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, it's great to hear that Dream Theater hadn't lost their überheavy edge. John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy, Jordan Rudess, and bassist John Myung effectively peeled back the pretentious excesses of Six Degrees, turned them in on themselves, and came up with a leaner, meaner but no less ambitious outing. ...
Dream Theater's third studio release, Awake, marks a definite change in the band's tone. From the moment the guitars enter on "6:00," the first track, a darker sound is immediately evident, and it continues through the entire 75 minutes of the disc. The complex song structures, marked by arrangements that would give many good players fits, are ...
Dream Academy was the self-titled debut release for the art-school trio led by lead singer/guitarist Nick Laird-Clowes. Produced by David Gilmour and Laird-Clowes, the group was rounded out by vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Kate St. John and keyboard player Gilbert Gabriel, and they struck the first time out with the album's standout track "Life ...
Stratosfear, the last Tangerine Dream album by the great Baumann/Franke/Froese threesome, shows the group's desire to advance past their stellar recent material and stake out a new musical direction while others were still attempting to come to grips with Phaedra and Rubycon. The album accomplishes its mission with the addition of guitar (six- and ...
Underwater Sunlight was the first album Paul Haslinger recorded with Tangerine Dream and his presence is immediately felt. With Haslinger, the group relied more heavily on strict structures and jarring compositional flourishes, which is only appropriate, since he came directly from a classical background. The group hadn't quite figured out how to ...
The German group's lucrative film scoring career began here, one year before Peter Baumann left for a solo career. The trio's eerie electronica was an early inspiration for Sorcerer, director William Friedkin says in the soundtrack's liner notes. If he had known about Tangerine Dream, he says he would have used the group's music for The Exorcist. ...
Tangram marked the beginning of a new musical direction for Tangerine Dream. It's closer to straight-ahead, melodic new age music and more tied to their soundtrack material. The first of the two side-long pieces progresses through several different passages that use gently brushed acoustic guitars as well as the requisite synthesizers. For new age ...
Exit marks the beginning of a new phase in Tangerine Dream's music: Gone were the side-long, sequencer-led journeys, replaced by topical pieces that were more self-contained in scope, more contemporary in sound. Johannes Schmoelling's influence is really felt for the first time here; Tangram, for all its crispness and melody, was simply a ...
Tangerine Dream set the stage for the style of "artsy" soundtrack music that dominated the '80s. Although Hyperborea is not a soundtrack, it was clearly influential on some of the work the group was hired to do for Risky Business, Flashpoint, Dreamscape, Firestarter, Legend, and close to 20 others. There have been at least a dozen members in this ...
Encore -- Tangerine Dream Live, 1977 is one of the better concert albums from Tangerine Dream. As with most of their live releases, this disc features all new material. Each of the long-form (over 16 minutes) pieces has its own set of movements. In effect, it is like listening to four electronic symphonies. This is also one of the strongest TD ...
Attempting to follow up the enormous success of their debut proved to be a difficult task for the British trio Dream Academy. Hugh Padgham (Genesis, the Police) came on board to produce the band with frontman Nick Laird-Clowes, resulting in a more glossy sheen to much of the material. "Indian Summer" kicks things off, and while echoing the ...
When Terius "The-Dream" Nash released his first album, during the third-to-last week of 2007, the Top 30 of the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart contained five songs he co-wrote, only one of which was credited to him as a performer. Four of these singles -- Mary J. Blige's "Just Fine," J. Holiday's "Suffocate" and "Bed," and his own "Shawty Is da Sh*!" ...
Love's Silhouette contains 14 tracks that swing and sing in the easy-flowing and genre-crossing style that has made Pieces of a Dream a staple in contemporary jazz. The group, who celebrated 25 years in the music business in 2001, continues to push stylistic boundaries and add more hard grooves, a few Latin flavors, and more funk than on their ...
The early to mid-'80s were a particularly fertile time for Tangerine Dream: the Froese/Schmoelling/Franke lineup had been together for several years, and they had been quite busy with soundtrack work and had just signed with Zomba Records after a longtime association with Virgin. For this concert (their second appearance behind the Iron Curtain), ...
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