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I'm not saying it was bad. It was actually quite awesome. It's just that there was no damn way I could have expected it to be about what it was about...
And there's a somber song about internet relationships in there somewhere too.
Huge number of musicians involved, some I recognized(Hansi Kürsch from Blind Guardian), some I didn't(nearly everyone else). It has me looking for stuff by their related bands now.
Ayreon is one of my favorite bands.
Yes, all their albums are crazy (cool) like this.
The Final Experiment is about how people in the future use time telepathy to contact a blind monk in the 7th century named Ayreon in an effort to warn the people of the past of mankind's impending destruction (or something like that...). In the end, he fails.
The Universal Migrator is by far my absolute favorite set of albums. Space metal and electronica, yum. This one has two albums:
The first is about the last man who lives on Mars using a machine to view and live mankinds past through dreams in a machine called, The Dream Sequencer. The songs send him back further until the first man. This album is mostly softer melodic stuff, but still very good.
The second album, he decides he wants to see farther back, and goes back to the big bang and follows the birth of the first soul, the Universal Migrator. The songs follow the journey the Migrator takes through the stars (and even a black hole!) until just before the Migrator reaches Earth (still in its infancy) the program fails and the last man (the sleeper) dies in his sleep. At the end, the sleeper awakens as the next Migrator and departs dead Earth for the stars in search of a new planet to begin life again.
Whew!
There's two albums after this, the Human experiment, and 11010101(whatever). The man behind the whole project, Arjen Lucassen, is brillant and he always pulls from a huge store of famous singers and musicians to make his albums. I believe Simone Simons from Epica is on the latest album (heart).
All in all, good stuff, and it's nice to see someone else who shares my love of Ayreon. (I've met no one else who does :( )
If you like Ayreon, check out some of the other bands he's in, or has had a hand in like Star One, or Streams of Passion. Good stuff. :)
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If you like Ayreon, check out some of the other bands he's in, or has had a hand in like Star One, or Streams of Passion. Good stuff. :)
Ha!
I was reading the descriptions of those Ayreon albums, thinking they sounded cool. Like just the sort of thing for people who are jaded with Hawkwind and Gong as too 'normal' for them anymore.
Then you mention Arjen Lucassen, and I think 'Hmm, that name's familiar, I should recognise that...', and now you end with a mention of 'Star One', and I think 'I've got that!'.
Sure enough, one dive into my collection, digs up 'Star One - Space Metal', limited edition, with bonus disc, one track of which is a 'Hawkwind Medley', the little accompanying booklet showing Arjen giving the thumbs up next to Dave Brock's bony-beaked visage.
It's a great album, made even better by the price I got it for, in a sale in Leuven.
So, this is what he's been doing since, eh?
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I never heard of them before but I spent the last half hour listening to them on you-tube. My thoughts are ,not bad. Their stuff is very operatic but to me their sound is a metaled up 70's synth-pop ala Blue Oyster Cult and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I'm not sure I'd buy one of their albums without listening to it completely first.
God I love this guy. Excellent movie, too. :)