Jordan Rudess On "Dream Theater"

New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Roadrunner Records) Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess talked to MusicRadar about the band's self-titled album, which will be available everywhere September 24. He goes through the album track by track, revealing how each song was written and assembled.

Says Jordan about "The Enemy Inside," "I think of 'The Enemy Inside' as a really good Dream Theater song that has all of the elements in a really concise way: It's got the hooky chorus; the grungy, metal-y guitar; and it also has the wacky keyboard stuff that I love to do. I like to offer some humor in the music. Sometimes there needs to be a bit of a smile in the middle of such drama."

Regarding "The Looking Glass," he says, "The song is kind of Rush -like, so if what I'm doing takes it out of the core too much, then I have to rethink what my approach is going to be. And that's OK—I love being inside the music because we're all working together to create a sound and a mood. My ego is in a very good place. When you hear me, you hear me, and when you don't, well, I'm still in there somewhere. That whole approach is prevalent in the song."

He also talks about the album's 22-minute closing track, "Illumination Theory," saying, "This is a great example of what Mike Mangini brings to us, which is this extreme rhythmic brain that can conceptualize very interesting ideas for rhythms that can go together. Like, 'If you play 10 bars of seven and you play four bars of five, it's going to sound really cool.' We would make notes and put these things together. That gave me a nice chance to pull out some music paper and write counterpoint stuff. I have these almost Bach / Gentle Giant things in there, and that was a lot of fun to work on."