"Ambient" plus Ayreon equals Ambeon. Well, that's the easy part. The hard part is to categorize this music. Ambient alright, but since I don't know a lot about that, it's hard for me. I'll just describe the things I hear, and I hope you will understand.
This music fits the mood I imagined when thinking of the word "ambient". Creating an atmosphere is most important here. Nothing too technically challenging to the ear, nothing too loud. That's not necessarily boring or uninteresting. There are mood changes among the songs, and within some of them too, like in Cold Metal, Sweet Little Brother or the instrumental Fate. Without becoming too heavy, there's aggression nonetheless. Here, Lucassen shows what a great melodic guitarist he is, more than once. Songs like this could be part of any Ayreon album.
For the larger part, the atmosphere called upon by the music is relaxed and slightly mysterious. I'd like to introduce the term "dawn", as it's not really dark, and there's some light at the end, a bit of hope.
A lot of Pink Floyd feelings, to be honest. But like the Ayreon albums, although the music is moving in and around the cliche type of prog, Lucassen is a musician and, more importantly, a composer good enough to do something with his songs to make it something special. What he is doing, he is doing great, and this Ambeon project is no exception. It's got a lot of influences, and still has something original. An original mix of well-known ingredients.
A Lost Message is a bit weird, as it contains acoustic guitar and flutes, giving it a bit of a folk touch. Almost happy, trying to be, but not yet melancholy.
Singer Astrid van der Veen is young. During the first tracks, you can't tell, but a couple of tracks later, you begin to notice. It's not the sound of her voice maybe, but more the lack of experience that comes with her age. I am not saying she's not good. She is good, and she will become someone we will hear a lot more of, I am sure. Her voice is sweet, but she's still a bit limited in the way of expressing her emotions. She is right between Anneke Giersbergen of The Gathering and Sharon den Adel of Within Temptation. Innocent. This is, as is the case with these two other bands, a mild but nice contrast with the music, giving it the extra melodics in the not very complicated musical parts.
Yet, she sings of darker moods and melancholy. She even wrote all the lyrics herself. In this department I also notice a lack of experience. Still, for a fourteen-year old she's ahead of a lot of lyricists a lot older than she is. The lyrics are more like a story than song lyrics. At times, the structure of the lyrics seems forcefed to the music, but it appears not to be any problem at all with this kind of music. I think her feeling for music is great.
Personally, I find this album is not too interesting. I am not a Floyd fan. I like more diversity, and more emotion. The atmosphere is built up roughly the same way, and the heavier pieces I mentioned before seem to be heavy in the same way. My conclusional rating is more what I think of it than what it could mean to a lot of people. No reviewer has the same taste as any of the readers, and I can only do my best to describe albums the best way I can. I hope I am doing justice to the album.
This mix of dark yet melodic music with high voices is getting more popular. I have just heard some items on the Dark Symphonies label. If you like their music, you should definitely try this one. Ayreon fans will like or even love it. Also recommended for Gathering and Within Temptation fans.
Conclusion: 6.5 out of 10.
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