This Way Madness Lies
Liquid Trio Experiment - Spontaneous Combustion
9/10
by Cristiano Agostino
This past Tuesday, a new album was released. The title is Spontaneous Combustion, and the band is Liquid Trio Experiment. Get it. Now. The sheer quality of the music on this “little” (78 minutes!) disc truly speaks for itself, and will leave no one disappointed. To do justice to this superlative piece of art, however, something must be told of how it came to light, of the tortuous path great music sometimes has to take to get to our ears.
The band began its long and winding journey in 1997 as the Liquid Tension Experiment, one of the many extemporary music projects put together by progressive rock label Magna Carta. The plan is beautifully elegant in its simplicity. Try putting four of the foremost contemporary rock musicians (Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci of Dream Theater, Jordan Rudess of Dixie Dregs, and King Crimson’s Tony Levin) together in a recording studio, and see what comes out.
The quartet’s first release, Liquid Tension Experiment, was recorded in little more than a week, yet still delivers a level other so-called “jam bands” can only dream of. The interplay between the musicians, each one a master of technique on his respective instrument, is faultless; the sheer energy and power of sonic avalanches like “Kindred Spirits” and “Paradigm Shift” are yet unmatched; the tongue-in-cheek humor of numbers like “Chris & Kevin’s Excellent Adventure” is delightful. Success was immediate, and the band found itself catapulted to the frontlines of the instrumental music world, becoming a Magna Carta bestseller, and performing at prestigious venues such as the 1999 NAMM (the music industry’s trade show), and the Roxy in L.A.
In 1999, the four musicians got together once more to record the second release; things didn’t go as smoothly this time around. Halfway through the recording of the album’s epic track (to be ironically named “When The Water Breaks”), guitarist John Petrucci’s pregnant wife went into labor, and he had to embrace his fatherly duties. He left the rest of the band on its own in an already booked studio—so the album had to be finished.
The power-trio hammered out a few dozen hours of improvised material and sculpted the choice cuts into a fashionable, sonically compelling recording. Magna Carta found itself with yet another masterpiece: Liquid Tension Experiment II was heavier (“Acid Rain”), darker (“Another Dimension”), and more structured (“Biaxident”), yet still managed to conserve the raw energy of the band’s debut.
By this time, Magna Carta had fully realized what a golden goose Liquid Tension Experiment was, and the band’s second release was destined to become a swansong as well. In the interim, Jordan Rudess had joined Dream Theater, Tony Levin was busy touring with Peter Gabriel, and the intense, but short-lived side project had to give way to individual careers. In addition, due to some contractual disputes with the group’s mastermind, Mike Portnoy, relationships between the musicians and the label had become severely strained.
But America is a land of entrepreneurs, and no sane record label—especially when dealing with an obscure sub-genre as progressive rock—would let go of such a sonic goldmine as LTE. More of their former recordings were brought to light, producing Spontaneous Combustion—a careful selection from the dozens of hours of improvised music the guys pumped out as a trio during the previous album’s recording sessions, neatly packaged in a stream-of-consciousness continuum under the new moniker, Liquid Trio Experiment. Leftovers? Perhaps—but fiery, blazing, delirious leftovers that put to shame most, if not all, of today’s jam music world, from String Cheese Incident to Phish to the next Grateful Dead wannabe.
Nowhere in the past decade has instrumental music sounded so smooth, so varied and, more importantly, so interesting. From the opening track, “Chris & Kevin’s Bogus Journey,” listeners are taken down the deepest of rabbit holes, guided by Portnoy’s layered, evocative drum work and Levin’s ultra-distorted Chapman Stick (15-stringed instrument) riffs—a perfect match for Rudess’ keyboard flights. He truly unleashes his whole bag of tricks for the listener, from glitches and “dying trumpet” noises to hyper-speed, chromatic flights. The music has an unusual liquid, almost New Age texture to it, but don’t be fooled into thinking you would hear this on heavy rotation at your nearest spa. “Hot Rod” effortlessly combines poppy melodic lines to blazing fast, Motorhead-inspired wild rides, complete with a peppering of Indian tablas.
The eccentric, sludge-funk of “Hawaiian Funk” and “Cappuccino” leads into the first epic of the album, aptly titled “Jazz Odyssey”—what an odyssey it is. It struggles its way through menacing sonic waves, lingering piano keys, and screechy electrical discharges—definitely not a trip for the faint hearted.
“Fire Dance” stands out as the most conventional composition, teetering between sweeping, classical-inspired crescendos and brooding soundscapes. The “Rubberband Man” and “Return of the Rubberband Man” duplet injects some funk back into the mix, leading the way into the two “outsider” songs of the work. “Tony’s Nightmare” is a demented lullaby where basses sound like an H.P. Lovecraft-ian cello. “Disneyland Symphony” turns into a nightmare not even composer Danny Elfman could have dreamed of, with a procession of mesmerizing bass ostinatos and frightening synths. It’s a painting of a Disneyland I never hope to visit.
Sometimes great music has to walk a long and winding road to reach the right ears. Liquid Trio Experiment walked that road, and invites you to embark on an adventure like no other. Are you up to the challenge?
