The new album by Ayreon, 01011001 is a good album and Arjen Lucassen is very happy with it. “I am proud of it.” The project with many different singers is getting more and more an established name. A lot of people look forward to a new album. Lucassen confirms this: “The presales are unbelievable!”

Computers play a big role as the title of the album suggest. Translated from binary the album is called Y, which is the name of the planet inhabited by Forever. Forever has done away with all emotions and in the song Age of Shadows they call for help in binary. The songs Connect The Dots and Web of Lies are situated in the present on Earth and also tell about the fading away of emotions by computers and the Internet. Lucassen paints a bleak image of the future in 01011001.

“Of course I do not see it that extreme. I have made it extra extreme for 01011001. I grew up in the sixties and know of a time without computers. If you were searching for music back then you would spend hours going from one recordstore to the next. It was a real quest back then. Nowadays you type the song into Google and you can download it within seconds. And that is just an example from music. When I had nothing to do when I was younger I would play football, nowadays you play a game, or surf the Internet. That is fun and all, but it bores quickly. I do not believe there is much value to it."

"You also see a lot of people get addicted to the Internet. I see it around me. But I must admit that I am the biggest slave to the Internet. I wake up, check my e-mail and go into the studio, which is filled with computers. But it’s important to make sure that the technology does the work for you.”

”Downloading all the latest files,
peer-to-peer, the torrent flows into my lap,
and I disconnect”

Connect The Dots is about addiction to various multimedia and file-sharing is named as well. 01011001 was way before the release date downloadable from the Internet “Two days after the promos were sent out it could be downloaded. Apparently there’s always journalists who want to upload it. What they are gaining with it, I do not know. When it happened the first time (with The Human Equation -BH) it sucked. I was thinking about it for weeks. In the end it turned out to sell well."

“I always have to rely on fans buying my CDs, because I don’t perform live often. Luckily most of them will buy it. For lots of starting bands it’s harder when their album is downloadable online, because they haven’t got a fanbase yet. On the other hand, if you play a lot of gigs, it should not be a problem."

“I do not see a future in legal downloads. You see Radiohead releasing their album (In Rainbows - BH) on CD eventually. For Ayreon downloads aren’t an option anyway, because I always add nice artwork and a DVD with fun extras. I have always done that. I think the artwork is an important part of an album. I have bought many albums because I liked the artwork.”

01011001 has like all Ayreon albums a big cast with all sorts of different singers, most of them famous in the metal scene. This time around there is also a rapper in the group: Wudstik. He is famous for his work in the Dutch hiphop group De Amersfoortse Coöperatie and his solo albums and he sings one song ( E=MC2).

“He added himself to my myspace and I was like “what should I do with this?” I looked at his website and listened to some songs in which he raps in Dutch and also a song on which he sings. That sounded pretty good, so I made contact with him. He came by and he was a really nice guy, very open-minded. I saw on his website a list with his favorite bands: Dream Theater, Ayreon and Pain of Salvation.

“I really like having people sing in a different way than their fans are used to. I had Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden singing a lot slower, for example. I do not really care about the different backgrounds of the singers, as long as they are good, I’m willing to work with them. I would love to work with The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, they are the heroes from my youth. But I am going to do a different project first, before continuing with Ayreon.”

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