Formation, studio albums and tours Liquid Tension Experiment was formed by Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy after
Magna Carta gave him the green light for "whatever he wanted to do". Portnoy first invited keyboardist
Jordan Rudess and progressive rock icon
Tony Levin (bass,
Chapman Stick) of
King Crimson and
Peter Gabriel's band to join him. Portnoy also had bassist
Billy Sheehan and keyboardist
Jens Johansson on his shortlist. In his second instructional video "Liquid Drum Theater", Portnoy said that his first choice for the guitar was
Dimebag Darrell, but he was unable to join because of conflicting schedules. Two other primary choices,
Steve Morse (formerly of
Dixie Dregs and
Kansas, at that time of
Deep Purple) and
Jim Matheos (
Fates Warning) were also unavailable. Portnoy then turned to fellow Dream Theater member
John Petrucci to fill the position (despite initially wanting to keep the project completely separate from Dream Theater In particular there were problems with the company that released the Liquid Drum Theater VHS tape using video footage of Liquid Tension Experiment in the studio without getting the required permission of Magna Carta. Mike Portnoy came back to Magna Carta in 2007 to release Liquid Trio Experiment's "Spontaneous Combustion" sessions. Several songs and
riffs from the project have been incorporated into Dream Theater's live performances, such as "
Instrumedley" from
Live at Budokan, which includes excerpts of the songs "Paradigm Shift" and "Universal Mind." On October 4, 2007, it was announced that LTE would headline
NEARfest 2008 in June. On March 29, 2008, six Liquid Tension Experiment tour dates in June 2008 were announced to celebrate the band's ten-year anniversary as well to create a "whole new musical experiment". Liquid Tension Experiment released a multi-disc boxed set of tour highlights from their 2008 tour, including complete shows from New York and Los Angeles, on DVD and CD (the L.A. show also on Blu-ray), the Liquid Trio Experiment 2 recording from Chicago (q.v. below), and a disc of improvisations from other shows on the tour. The New York and Los Angeles shows were also released separately on CD or DVD, all through Dream Theater's official bootlegs website, YtseJam Records' subsidiary, Lazy Tomato Entertainment.
Liquid Trio Experiment During the recording sessions for their second album, John Petrucci had to leave when his wife went into premature labor. During that period, the remaining members, who still had studio time booked, continued to write music in improvisation. On October 23, 2007, a compilation of jams from those sessions was released under the name of
Liquid Trio Experiment. The album, called
Spontaneous Combustion, was recorded from Mike Portnoy's
DATs of the sessions because the original master tapes disappeared before the mixing stage. A few songs from Liquid Tension Experiment 2 were spawned from these jam sessions, including "914", "Chewbacca", and "Liquid Dreams".
Liquid Trio Experiment 2 The second incarnation of Liquid Trio Experiment happened unexpectedly while playing a concert in
Chicago, IL on June 25, 2008. In the beginning of their set, Jordan Rudess' keyboard started playing
two adjacent notes on every press of a key. At the end of playing "Universal Mind", he went off stage to talk to the tech crew to see if it could be fixed. In the meantime, the other three musicians on stage continued to play, improvising for what turned out to be the rest of the concert. Rudess was on the phone with
Roland for most of the time, and finally realized the keyboard was unfixable in that time, so he came onstage and took Petrucci's guitar to jam with the band. Petrucci took Levin's bass, and Levin joined in on
Chapman Stick. Toward the end of the show,
Charlie Benante from the band
Anthrax came and played drums while Portnoy played bass. This entire improvised concert was released in 2009 as
When the Keyboard Breaks: Live in Chicago.
Interim period On July 19, 2012, at Dream Theater's second show on Huntington NY, Tony Levin joined Petrucci, Rudess and
Mike Mangini (Dream Theater's drummer at the time) onstage to perform "Paradigm Shift." Later in 2012, Portnoy performed "Acid Rain" live with PSMS, his band with
Derek Sherinian,
Tony MacAlpine and
Billy Sheehan. They recorded a live DVD in Tokyo including the song. On February 10, 2017,
Mike Portnoy and
Tony Levin reunited on stage in
Tampa, FL to perform Paradigm Shift, Acid Rain and Universal Mind. They were accompanied by members of progressive metal group
Haken. In April 2019, both
John Petrucci and
Jordan Rudess announced that a new Liquid Tension Experiment reunion is possible, once all involved musicians find time for that. In May 2020,
Jordan Rudess posted a video to the website
Cameo stating, in response to a fan's question, that the prospect of Liquid Tension Experiment reuniting "looks very good", with the only barrier being the band members' schedules.
Reunion and Liquid Tension Experiment 3 On December 14, 2020, Levin, Portnoy, Rudess and Petrucci released a series of posts on social media (pictures of themselves wearing surgical masks spelling out "LTE 3") teasing a third Liquid Tension Experiment album; a picture of the four of them together with the same masks was posted the following day. On December 17, 2020, it was formally announced that
Liquid Tension Experiment 3 would be released by
Inside Out Music on March 26, 2021. The album was ultimately released April 16, 2021; the delay was due to printing errors by the manufacturer. A video for the song "The Passage of Time" was released on January 22, 2021. This was followed up by a video for the song "Beating the Odds" on February 26, 2021, and then by a video for the song "Hypersonic" on March 24, 2021. In an interview for
Revolver magazine, Portnoy revealed the group had signed a two-album deal with InsideOut, and humorously added that a fourth Liquid Tension Experiment album would probably not take another 20 years. ==Band members==