Dream Theater "Octavarium (Canada, Warner Music Canada, CD 83793)"

Octavarium is the eighth studio album by American progressive metal band Dream Theater. Released on June 7, 2005, it was the band's final release with Atlantic Records. Recorded between September 2004 and February 2005, it was the last album recorded at The Hit Factory in New York City. With it, the band decided to create "a classic Dream Theater album", drawing upon their various stylistic influences while trying to make the music less complex. The album takes its creative concept from the musical octave.

Octavarium peaked in the top five in the Finnish, Italian, and Swedish charts, and in the top ten in the Dutch, Japanese, and Norwegian charts. Critical reception of the album was generally positive; the diversity of the music was praised, although critics found some of the songwriting to be inconsistent. Dream Theater promoted the album on a year-long world tour, with the majority of concerts lasting almost three hours and featuring a different set list each night. The tour finished at Radio City Music Hall accompanied by an orchestra; this performance was recorded and released as a live album and concert video entitled Score. They co-headlined the 2005 North American Gigantour with Megadeth.

After completing a North American tour supporting one of their main influences, Yes, in summer 2004, Dream Theater took a two-month break. The band reconvened at The Hit Factory in New York City in November 2004 to begin work on their eighth studio album.

After writing the concept album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, the double album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and the metal-focused Train of Thought, the band decided to create "a classic Dream Theater album". Keyboardist Jordan Rudess described it as "really going back to creating a real band effort, as well as drawing upon all our various stylistic influences." On Octavarium, the band wanted to make the music less complex, featuring songs which Rudess regards as "quicker to appreciate", although noted that the twenty-four-minute "Octavarium" was not as accessible. Guitarist John Petrucci noted that they wanted to focus on writing strong songs. To achieve this, the band stripped the sound down to piano, guitar and vocals when writing, focusing on the melodies and song structures.

Drummer Mike Portnoy dismissed claims that Octavarium was an attempt to write a more commercial album, stating that the band simply "[has] that side to [them]. We love bands like U2 or Coldplay, as well as liking shorter songs." Portnoy noted that, after writing Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and Train of Thought, they had not written an album of shorter songs for some time. He said that the band had found writing longer songs easier than writing shorter ones, and that the band was not trying to write a radio hit as "the label wouldn't have done crap with it anyway."

The band had previously written an orchestral-style piece in the form of "Overture" on Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, but Jordan Rudess recorded these using two keyboards: his Kurzweil K2600 and Korg KARMA, the latter a then-new synthesizer that Rudess had bought fairly recently. The tracks "The Answer Lies Within", "Sacrificed Sons" and "Octavarium" marked the first time Dream Theater worked with an orchestra, conducted by Jamshied Sharifi (who later conducted the Octavarium Orchestra on Dream Theater's 2006 live album Score). The orchestra was selected based on their sight reading ability, allowing all their parts to be recorded in a maximum of two takes, even though they had never seen or played the music before.

Hugh Syme provided the artwork for Octavarium. The idea of depicting a giant Newton's cradle was born out of discussions between Syme and Portnoy about how "for everything you do in music you create either a cluster or triad", according to Syme. "And then it became evident that for every action there is an opposite reaction. So I thought we could do something based on the Newton's cradle." The artwork contains numerous references to the numbers five and eight, alluding to the album's concept. For example, the Newton's cradle has eight suspended balls, and there are five birds on the cover. The album booklet features an octagonal maze, spider and octopus, among other references. The landscape on the cover is made up of a sky and grass from Indiana, and a background from the Lake District. Octavarium began an extended association with the band for Syme. He provided the artwork for all the following studio albums (apart from The Astonishing) and most of the following live releases.

Tracklist:

1. The Root of All Evil 08:39
2. The Answer Lies Within 05:19  
3. These Walls 07:36  
4. I Walk Beside You 04:30  
5. Panic Attack 08:13  
6. Never Enough 06:46
7. Sacrificed Sons 10:43  
8. Octavarium 24:00

Time:  01:15:46

Octavarium has five parts:

I) Someone Like Him

II) Medicate

III) Full Circle

IV) Intervals

V) Razor's Edge

Recording information:

Recorded at The Hit Factory, NYC - November 2004 - February 2005.

Mixed at Quad Studio, NYC - March 2005.

Mastered at Sterling Sound, NYC.

Doug Oberkircher – engineer

Colleen Culhane, Kaori Kinoshita, Ryan Simms – assistant engineers

Bert Baldwin – additional studio assistance

Michael H. Brauer – mixing

Keith Gary – assistant and Pro Tools engineer

Will Hensley – second assistant

George Marino – mastering

Hugh Syme – art direction, design, illustration, art concept

Colin Lane – photography

The last album to ever be recorded at The Hit Factory studios in New York.