Permission to Fly is the title of Jordan Rudess' latest album. The keyboardist of prog rock icons Dream Theater has once again embarked on a solo journey and recorded around 55 minutes of mixed genres.

With his latest album, [Rudess] ‘deals with the complexity of human existence in our multi-faceted world’, according to the press release. Unfortunately, the album comes without a booklet, otherwise it would be easier to follow some of the lyrics and verify the substance of the claim. So we have to believe and trust. In what?

Each song is an independent journey, but in its entirety the album reveals a musical odyssey through the broad spectrum of human experience.

Soso. One thing is clear in any case: when it comes to explanatory descriptions for the various phenomena of musical forms of expression, marketing is rarely embarrassed to find big words for every groat, a licence to fly, so to speak. They take off for all they're worth, and then the listener is surprised at the meagre sounds that can be distilled from the big words if you make an effort.

In the case of Permission to Fly, there is a mix of genres. Not always prog rock, but at its core it is. Sometimes rather brisk, sometimes balladic. Here a reminiscence of Gentle Giant, there of Frank Zappa (but maybe just by mistake, we don't know for sure). And at the end, the chorus and orchestra are in full swing. It sounds lavish.

Surprisingly, however, it is not. Some tracks - for example the opener The Final Threshold - spray out of the loudspeakers as easily digestible prog parades. Others - like Haunted Devils - reach for the electro shelf, flanked by splashes of piano, and then continue in pop guise, in 12/4 with a little 7/4 here and there. Not that it gets boring. Shadow of the Moon is even poppier with a heavy tendency towards conventional pleasingness. This is a little surprising, but perhaps fulfils the function of the ballad on heavy metal albums, which is primarily there to communicate ‘We can also make music’.

Together with Rudess, drummer Darby Todd, singer That Joe Payne and guitarists Steve Dadaian and Bastian Martinez recorded this joy of variation - with the latter taking on the solos.

In terms of sound, the album is airy and mostly expansive. What is sometimes missing is a solid bass foundation - as there is no bass player, the task was given to the keys, which sometimes had other things to do, it seems. There's not much to criticise about the overall quality of the mix, however, as it's all exquisitely clean.

Permission to Fly is tamer than Rudess' 2019 album Wired for Madness, for example, but that's what is expected of him, that he not only reinvents new tracks with each album, but also reinvents himself. He has succeeded in doing so. (Thomas Semmler, HighResMac)

Jordan Rudess, keyboards
Darby Todd, drums
That Joe Payne, vocals
Steve Dadaian, guitar
Bastian Martinez, guitar solos