Arjen Lucassen

Arjen Anthony Lucassen was born on 3 April 1960 in the Netherlands. He began his career as a guitarist in Bodine in the early 1980s, then joined Vengeance in 1984. Desiring to take this group to more progressive terrain, he eventually resigned to release Pools Of Sorrow, Waves Of Joy solo (in 1993) to satisfy this desire for musical complexity. The album will not be successful. In 1995, he released the album Ayreon : The Final Experiment , without any artist name. Later, Ayreon (which is in this record the name of a character) will become the name of the formation. Arjen A. Lucassen deals with almost all the instruments in this very progressive and melodic project. The success will be relative but sufficient for the project to continue (this time really under the name Ayreon) with Actual Fantasy (1996), then a double album, Into The Electric Castle (1998), which this time will be acclaimed by critics. Arjen A. Lucassen is now known for his Rock-Operas, his SF-oriented concept albums, and his music combining Prog and Folk. It was around this time that he began to create music with different projects. In 1996 he released a new solo album, Strange Hobby , composed solely of classic rock covers from the 1960s. In 2001, he released an album of remixes in ambient version of titles by Ayreon (under the wise name of Ambeon), then the year after he created the band Star One with which he can shoot, unlike Ayreon where he is almost the only instrumentalist and invites many vocalists. At the same time, new albums from Ayreon were released. After the release of The Human Equation in 2004, Lucassen founded the Stream Of Passion band to be able to collaborate, more sustainably, with singer Marcela Bovio. Within the band is also the guitarist Lori Linstruth, who later became Lucassen's partner, his manager, and who will later be found as guitarist and soloist in a future project: Guilt Machine . In 2008, album 01011001 finished a large narrative arc that links all the albums from Ayreon. The musician announces that the project stops temporarily and focuses first on Guilt Machine, with whom he releases On This Perfect Day in 2009. The following year, a second album by Star One was released eight years after the first album. 2012 will be the year of the remasters of the first albums of Ayreon and the release of his new solo album Lost In The New Real, 18 years after Pools Of Sorrow, Waves Of Joy. At the end of 2013, Ayreon returned with The Theory Of Everything. The following year, a new side project was created with Anneke van Giersbergen, named The Gentle Storm. The duo released an original double album, including the same tracks on each of the two discs, in folk on one and metal on the other. From 2016, several concert projects from Ayreon were set up. The first will be The Theater Equation , a performance that consists of playing the whole of The Human Equation with a real theatre set and a certain degree of play by vocalists (many of whom sing on the studio album). Arjen Lucassen does not participate himself, preferring to compose and record rather than live performances, but he supervises the show. After the release of The Source (always with its main Ayreon project) in 2017, the live Ayreon Universe project is launching. Unlike The Theater Equation, this is not a particular album but a kind of best-of that is played. Sixteen vocalists and eleven instrumentalists participate, nine thousand fans are present and the event is filmed by 30 cameras to lead to the DVD Ayreon Universe – Best Of Ayreon Live . A new concert by Ayreon takes place during the 2018 edition of the Graspop festival. A new concert is expected in 2019 for Into The Electric Castle's 20th anniversary.
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