IN TRANSIT
Arjen Lucassen returns with an exciting new double album that takes place outside the Ayreon universe. Here the reclusive Dutchman discusses his ghostly tale of star-crossed lovers, his plans for a Transitus movie and who he really thinks is the best Doctor Who.
Words: Dave Ling Portraits: Lori Linstruth
Arjen Lucassen has never been a man to do anything by halves. Since the arrival of Ayreon a quarter-century ago, this towering yet quietly spoken Dutchman has pieced together a bamboozling catalogue of releases. Lucassen is a storyteller, and stories require casts. To that end he’s seduced the great and the good of rock, metal and prog - from our genre this includes Fish, James LaBrie, the late John Wetton, Steve Hackett, Rick Wakeman, Anneke van Giersbergen, Within Temptation’s Sharon den Adel, Damian Wilson, Thijs van Leer, Neal Morse, Keith Emerson and Mikael Åkerfeldt - to step into his ever more elaborate, often otherworldly tales of electric castles, time travel, distant planets, postapocalyptic civilisations and its most frequent characters, an alien race called The Forever.
PRESS/TRANSITUS
In 2017, Lucassen tangled with the concept of man-made life and artificial intelligence on the ninth Ayreon album, The Source. As ever, he pledged to do something completely different next time around. Little did he realise that the results would demand three years of his life.