17th May will see the release of Lucassen & Soeterboek's Plan Nine album 'The Long-Lost Songs' via Music Theories Recordings / Mascot Label Group. It was the early nineties, and musical polymath Arjen Lucassen had begun working on several projects: a solo album, a progressive-rock opera and a rock album. Around this time, he watched singer Robert Soeterboek perform live with Bodine, his former early-eighties heavy metal band. "His vocals truly impressed me, a rarity!" Lucassen recalls. "He had the charisma and power of singers like David Coverdale and Robert Plant. Discovering that we really got along personally, we decided to collaborate on some songs, just for fun."

So you think you know Arjen Lucassen, huh? Towering Dutch prog rock polymath? The man behind the super successful prog rock conceptualists Ayreon? Not to mention his prog metal offshoots Star One and Guilt Machine? Enormous overarching concept albums about space and time, packed to the hilt with special guests that read like a who’s who of modern day progressive rock? Records that take as long to conceive as they do to record? That Arjen Lucassen? Well, think again…
"Golden Age Of Music", the latest album to feature Lucassen’s not inconsiderable talents, may also feature stellar musicianship and killer tunes, but there is no storyline that takes place far into the future in the far flung depths of space. Nor do the album’s 11 tracks come courtesy of an unending list of guest artists…

For the 20th anniversary, Arjen Lucassen remixed the audio to 21st century standards. He made it clear that it's a 'remix', not a 'remaster', saying "Remastering takes 2 hours, this remix took me 2 months!".
Into the Electric Castle is an epic prog rock opera from Dutch guitarist Arjen Lucassen. The sci-fi story centers around eight strangers brought together into a dimension of no space and no time. The characters in the story are played by varying lead singers, including former Marillion frontman Fish. The supporting cast is a who's who of proggers, which translates into superb musicianship. The story is standard sci-fi fare, but winds up being quite effective with the accompanying score. The massive coordination of such a large project is admirable, but to pull it off with such impressive results is stunning…

Ayreonauts Only is the first compilation album by Dutch progressive metal/rock project Ayreon by Arjen Anthony Lucassen, released in 2000. Although categorized as a compilation album, it consists only of previously unreleased material, with alternate versions of Ayreon songs with different singers, demos, and of the song "Cold Metal" from Lucassen's then-upcoming project Ambeon. The album's name comes from the fact that, according to Lucassen, it is "intended primarily for die-hard Ayreon fans".

Ayreon is the vision of Dutch multi-instrumentalist Arjen Anthony Lucassen. He formed Ayreon around 1994 from the need to create rock operas. His music can be broadly categorised as progressive metal but with themes that range from electronica to folk, symphonic prog and space rock. Lyrically, the stories tend to evolve around fantasy, sci-fi or human emotion. The rock operas tend to involve a series of characters, often represented by a different vocalist and a plethora of session musicians, although Lucassen tends to cover the majority of instruments…

"Strange Hobby" is a cover album (Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Status Quo, The Who, Kaleidoscope, The Kinks, Bob Dylan, The Hollies, The Move…) by Arjen Anthony Lucassen (Ayreon), released in 1996.
In the mid 1990s Arjen Anthony Lucassen wanted a break from composing epic prog operas for his long-running Ayreon project and decided to record a bunch of his favourite tunes from the 60s. Strange Hobby was originally released anonymously and, after being out of print for a decade, here it comes again, beefed up with four bonus cuts.
Lucassen plays and sings everything himself and gives everything a heavy glam rock sheen, although the decision to put so much compression and to layer effects on the vocals renders everything a little inhuman.

Guilt Machine is a project by Arjen Lucassen of Ayreon among many other projects and bands. On this album he departs from the over the top complexity of Ayreon in favor of the simplicity of a relatively small line-up. Rather than putting together an ensemble cast of vocalists, Arjen recruited Jasper Steverlinck, singer of the Belgian alternative rock band Arid, as the sole vocalist of Guilt Machine. The talents of Chris Maitland (ex-Porcupine Tree) were enlisted for the drum parts. Arjen's partner and manager Lori Linstruth supplied the guitar solos. The rest of the instruments were played by Arjen himself, who also sings backing vocals. Musically, this album is a more mellow affair and may not be metal in the traditional sense. Instead it takes on an alternative prog direction that sounds a lot like a combination of bands such as Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, Opeth's "Damnation," and Muse…

Revel in Time is the third studio album by Arjen Anthony Lucassen's progressive metal project/supergroup Star One, released via Inside Out on 18 February 2022…

With a career spanning more than three decades, composer and multi-instrumentalist Arjen Lucassen has firmly established himself worldwide as driving force in progressive rock. While best known for his rock opera project Ayreon, the multi-talented Dutchman also regularly embarks on musical side projects such as Ambeon, Guilt Machine and Star One. These projects all explore different aspects of Lucassen's musical personality. Lucassen strives to keep a consistent cast of vocalists for Star One rather than mixing it up with the ever-changing vocal line-up that characterizes Ayreon. For "Victims of the Modern Age" he reunited the stellar cast of lead vocalists from the first album, “Space Metal” (2002): Russell Allen (Symphony X), Damian Wilson (Headspace, Threshold), Floor Jansen (ReVamp, ex-After Forever), and Dan Swanö (Nightingale, Second Sky, ex-Edge Of Sanity)…

Ambeon is a Dutch progressive act, a project consisting mainly of multi-instrumentalist composer Arjen Anthony Lucassen (Ayreon, Star One, Guilt Machine) and Astrid van der Veen, very talented young female vocalist. The act's first and only album to date, "Fate of a Dreamer", was recorded in 2001, when van der Veen was just 14 years old. Ambeon's atmospheric sound draws from a wide variety of influences, including Celtic, gothic and progressive music. The songs on "Fate of a Dreamer" are mostly composed of different remixed pieces of songs from Ayreon albums, whereas the lyrics are original, written by van der Veen.
This expanded edition is a 2-CD digipack with an 20-page booklet. CD 1 contains all of the tracks from the original release, plus three additional tracks that were exclusively found on the "Cold Metal" single…

In the past, Anneke van Giersbergen, former singer of The Gathering and mastermind of the Agua De Annique, featured on two Ayreon's albums: Into The Electric Castle and 01011001. The Gentle Storm is one of the many side projects of the Dutch multi-instrumentist Arjen Anthony Lucassen. Officially they are the only two band members, but in their first release they feature Ed Warby at drums, who was also in Into The Electric Castle and Johan Van Stratum (Stream Of Passion) at bass. The album is actually offered in two contrasting interpretations in the one package, a "Gentle" version that presents the pieces in a prettier and frequently orchestrated format, and a "Storm" version of the same core tracks that adds the heavier rock guitars perhaps more associated with Lucassen.

With a career spanning more than three decades, composer and multi-instrumentalist Arjen Lucassen has firmly established himself worldwide as driving force in progressive rock. While best known for his rock opera project Ayreon, the multi-talented Dutchman also regularly embarks on musical side projects such as Ambeon, Guilt Machine and Star One. Arjen’s side projects all explore different aspects of his musical personality, with each new release being a creative reaction to the style of its predecessor. Star One is no exception.
The first Star One album, Space Metal (2002) was Arjen’s reaction to his previous project, the relatively soft Ambeon. After releasing the first few Ayreon albums, Arjen had noticed that many others were following in his footsteps and releasing their own rock operas…

Stream of Passion is another one of Arjen Anthony Lucassen's ( Ayreon, Ambeon, Star One) projects and features musicians from as different countries as The Netherlands, USA, Mexico and Brazil. The music is build around Mexican female vocalist Marcela Bovio's beautiful voice. Arjen discovered her and she guested on Ayreon's The Human Equation album from 2004.

Ayreon's second full length output is a quite unique piece of music from this project. For the first and last time, the Dutch mastermind Arjen Lucassen decided to not invite a high number of guest musicians but did something like a solo project where he played all instruments and invited one main singer as well as one supplementary vocalist. The project feels more like a band in here and this album sounds quite homogenous. The the individual songs are based on fantasy and sci-fi movies, or on stories Arjen wrote himself. It's also the project's shortest full length release and gets quickly to the point.

Lost in the New Real (also referred to as Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Lost in the New Real) is the second solo studio album by Dutch songwriter, producer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Arjen Anthony Lucassen. It is Lucassen's first solo album since Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy released 18 years ago under the name Anthony, before he reached fame with his progressive metal/rock opera project Ayreon. He sang lead vocals for the first time since the first album, and played most of the instruments himself including all guitars, bass and keyboards.
On Lost in the New Real, Lucassen does a very good job at creating some wonderful sound textures, by mixing the melodic progressive rock with some guitar metal riffs and adding some excellent keyboard works, a solid drumming and some folk music amidst.