Dream Theater self titled album discussion - [SPOILER FREE DISCUSSION ONLY]

[Kotowboy]

But hey !

It's a DREAM Theater - so the blank billboard is a blank canvas like your mind, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan 

[Zydar]

"Life begins with an empty slate". Wrong album though.

[liran95]

But hey !

It's a DREAM Theater - so the blank billboard is a blank canvas like your mind, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan 

I don't know about you, but if there was a billboard in one of my dreams, it wouldn't be blank

[SystematicThought]

I would love a remix of ADTOE with DT's mix. Bridges In The Sky would be so heavy hitting and incredible

[aprilethereal]

Bridges In The Sky already is incredible

[TheGreatPretender]

Uh, guys, that's not a billboard... It's a projection screen for the Drive-In 'Theatre'. And even if something would be projecting onto it, chances are, it wouldn't be visible in the middle of a sunny day on the beach, anyway.

[JayOctavarium]

It should be printed in such a way where if you look at it through sunglasses or whatever it shows a still from LALP

[TheGreatPretender]

It should be printed in such a way where if you look at it through sunglasses or whatever it shows a still from LALP

Or better yet. The album should come with its own decoder glasses. 

[JayOctavarium]

YessSSssss

[YtseCullen]

It's a movie screen for a drive in theatre. A lot of people go see movies in theatres to go see The Bigger Picture version of the movie 

[Lucien]

Yes, I think this is the art for The Bigger Picture.

[Madman Shepherd]

Again - this is a huge part of what digital art is. This is his medium, and very few people in his genre are going to take their own photos of drive-in signs. Only difference between now and ten years ago is that it's ever easier to find this stuff.

Fine to criticise Hugh Syme for the finished product, but I think it's a bit rich that we have this conversation every two years, where people want to hang him for being this kind of digital artist. It's really not news!

I agree.
It's just not practical to set up and take photos for such an array of random elements to compose one image. It's fine if it's for a cover, and it's something that can exist, but when you're putting together surreal scenes like this, it's just too much, and would make it more time consuming and expensive to the point of being impractical for a band like DT to do this every album.

Excellent point.  Plus he lives in Indiana and has a family.  I don't think he has the time or money to do things the way SOME people want him to do it.  I'm sure he makes a really good living but probably not enough to justify what some of the fans demand. 

Had you not gone out and searched for the stock image, would it have affected the quality of the final image?

I can't answer for him but I can answer for me.  I love art.   I'm not an artist and I don't spend much time looking at art but I know good art when I see it (it being subjective of course).   My house is filled with art.  Everything from actually prints from people like Paul Norton, to album covers, to pictures I took that were put through a simple digital filter to make it look more artsy, or crappy cheap stuff I found a thrift store that I happen to like....hell, I even have a painting done by an elephant at a local zoo. 

With that said, I still consider myself a very casual art fan.  Sure I'll pay 15 bucks to go to a nice art museum and I'll make an effort to go to the art festival downtown but thats it.  The only stock images of art I know are ones I see in clipart in powerpoint presentations so a high quality image like what Syme does either hits me or it doesn't and most of what he does I love.  This one is no exception. 

[The Stray Seed]

Yes, I think this is the art for The Bigger Picture.

Me too.

[TheGreatPretender]

Two snippets have appeared on youtube. One from IT and one from EM. Is it legit to post the links?

Unless they're directly from RoadRunner or Dream Theater, they wouldn't be allowed to be posted.
They're also probably fake.

[BlobVanDam]

FAKE. FAKE. FAKE.

One of them is just the intro of the fake one that was posted the other day with the 2 second snippet taken from the studio video (it's clearly the same guy), and the other one is I believe a JR Omnisphere demo from NAMM with some other song tacked onto the end.

It's not ok to post links to potential snippets, real or fake, as they wouldn't be allowed until after being made official, which you'd find out about here anyway.

[The Stray Seed]

FAKE. FAKE. FAKE.

One of them is just the intro of the fake one that was posted the other day with the 2 second snippet taken from the studio video (it's clearly the same guy), and the other one is I believe a JR Omnisphere demo from NAMM with some other song tacked onto the end.

It's not ok to post links to potential snippets, real or fake, as they wouldn't be allowed until after being made official, which you'd find out about here anyway.

Thank you Blob! That's why I asked about it before =)

[BlobVanDam]

As they say, better to be safe than temp-banned!
As the rule of thumb, unless you see it posted here by a mod, or posted by DT directly (FB/Twitter/dt.net), then it's off limits, whether it's real or fake. If/when a real snippet is released, it would be posted as a new thread by bosk/wey literally the second it's publicly available.

[wasteland]

Yes. Despite being an unofficial forum official updates are posted here too as they go public. 

[The Stray Seed]

Roger!

[JoeG]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HMyjSkGhDM

New interview with John and James.

For those of you who don't want to hear TEI before release, the video contains snippets of it at the beginning and end.

[bosk1]

Uh, guys, that's not a billboard... It's a projection screen for the Drive-In 'Theatre'.

This.  You fail, DTF. 

[wasteland]

Love the hilarious bit at the beginning.

And this probably deserves a thread of its own 

[mikeyd23]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HMyjSkGhDM

New interview with John and James

Cool interview, no new info I don't think but a nice conversation with JP and JLB.  Always good to hear their interviews!

[JPX]

Again - this is a huge part of what digital art is. This is his medium, and very few people in his genre are going to take their own photos of drive-in signs. Only difference between now and ten years ago is that it's ever easier to find this stuff.

Fine to criticise Hugh Syme for the finished product, but I think it's a bit rich that we have this conversation every two years, where people want to hang him for being this kind of digital artist. It's really not news!

I agree.
It's just not practical to set up and take photos for such an array of random elements to compose one image. It's fine if it's for a cover, and it's something that can exist, but when you're putting together surreal scenes like this, it's just too much, and would make it more time consuming and expensive to the point of being impractical for a band like DT to do this every album.

Had you not gone out and searched for the stock image, would it have affected the quality of the final image? Judge the result, not the process. If the most appropriate image of a drive-in sign happens to be one of the first results on Google, then so be it. The real sign happens to use the spelling "theatre". It's not a matter of being easy to fix, it's a matter of whether it was even necessary to change it to begin with.

I respectfully disagree. Either do your job properly or don't bother. Putting together a montage of free images isn't art IMO.

Personally I have zero respect for Syme. If he was to paint these images then that would be a different story.

[Kotowboy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HMyjSkGhDM

New interview with John and James

Cool interview, no new info I don't think but a nice conversation with JP and JLB.  Always good to hear their interviews!

" Fo'ward."

Not a bad interview but I find it a bit cringey when interviewers are a bit sycophantic.

[Podaar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HMyjSkGhDM

New interview with John and James

Cool interview, no new info I don't think but a nice conversation with JP and JLB.  Always good to hear their interviews!

^ This. Plus...HOT BABE ALERT!

[Blackfield]

Dream Theater/Roadrunner isn't very awesome at building hype for the new album. I've almost forgot there's a new cd coming in a month.

[Meatrose]

I just noticed that no one has posted the full image in this thread yet. Here it is.

[Onno]

I just noticed that no one has posted the full image in this thread yet. Here it is.

Thanks!

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

That, I love! 

[mikeyd23]

Thanks for putting up the full image.  I like it!   

[Meatrose]

Hmm... I just now went back in this thread to look at the other full images and noticed that they seem to have been taken down from imgur. Perhaps they don't want us to put them together like this? If so I'll remove the picture from my post.

[Mladen]

That interviewer is gorgeous.  And yeah, fun interview all around. 

[TheGreatPretender]

Man, it's crazy to think how much the band has changed since MP's departure. I remember a time, when these 2-member interviews would usually just contain JP and MP. JP was of course, always one of the main creative and musical forces behind the album, and MP always took that seat as the head honcho, the spokesperson for the album.

Now, James kind of took that over. JP is obviously still the main musical force behind it, but now, JLB is really filling the shoes of the front man. He understands everything about the music and the direction perfectly (not that he never used to, he just never had the opportunity to fully express it, IMO) and is really embracing being the 'front' man of Dream Theater, being the face and the voice of it. Which, I think, is how it should be. He no longer comes off like that guy who flies in from Canada to do the singing. It's much more evident that he's an integral part of the Dream Theater brand.

[Kotowboy]

That alone would have made a nice album cover.