Search - Dream Theater :: Live at Budokan (Mcup)

Soon a Dream Theater concert CD will require an entire shelf

W T WASP | Calgary, AB CANADA | 12/03/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"There's virtually NO concert by any artist in musical history in existence that was recorded in Japan that was not good... except this one... it wasn't good... it was FAN-FREAKIN-TASTIC!



I made a slight error in odering this disc - I unwittingly ordered and received the DVD. But that was a good thing, cos the DVD allowed me to really appreciate the visual aspect of the concert, which made the audio version even more enjoyable (if that makes sense?).



The only real issue I have with Dream Theater's live albums of late, is not so much that they are so long that they require 3 CDs (or more if this trend continues), but that the CDs are not "filled up" enough to truly justify it.



Three CDs with just under an hour of music each (54-55 minutes) could have (theoretically anyway) been squeezed onto a pair of standard 80-minute CDs ; that is if one was so inclined to do a little remixing to make it fit... which I was, and I *almost* did - but even with a little bit of track shuffling and other parlor tricks to make things fit better while maintaining a natural continuity, I was left with 6 minutes worth of too much content on one disc. Well, too much for a programme of two 80-minute discs, as it turned out ; I could have used a 90-minute disc and been alright, but I really wanted to avoid that option for player-compatibility issues.



If the METROPOLIS Part II track (BEYOND THIS LIFE) was not extended with a long instrumental break in between (as cool as it is!), then everything would have fit perfectly, and allowed me to have the same concert on TWO discs, rather than 3, thereby eliminating the extra "concert interruptus" of fading in and out as it goes from one disc to the next... and to the next.



But that's just me. If the number of CDs and duration of each disc matters not to you, then you will love this concert. I highly recommend the DVD as well - while what you hear on the 3-CD audio set is outstanding, the sights & visuals from the DVD concert give it a whole new life of its own (and no "concert-interruptus"! Haha).





WTW"