By: Dr. Matt Warnock
During a career that has spanned three decades, multi-instrumentalist and composer Arjen Lucassen has firmly established himself as an elder statesman in the world of Prog-Rock. Best known for his work with the rock-opera inspired group Ayreon, which features large numbers of performers and elaborate storylines, Lucassen recently put together a smaller, yet highly-effective, musical team for his Guilt Machine project. Made up of Lucassen, drummer Chris Maitland, vocalist Jasper Steverlinck and guitarist-lyricist Lori Linstruth, Guilt Machine is a tightly-knit group of musicians that are focused on making inspired, emotionally engaging and musically sophisticated rock.
Guilt Machine’s debut album, On This Perfect Day, was written as a concept album of sorts, which Lucassen wrote to explore “the destructive psychology of guilt, regret and the darkest form of secret — the secrets we hide from ourselves.” Though the concept album, perfected by bands like Pink Floyd and Iron Maiden, seems to have gone out of fashion in recent years, it’s albums like On This Perfect Day that remind us all why concept driven rock was such a success in the first place.
Containing only six tracks, the shortest being a little over six minutes and the longest being almost twelve, the album possesses a musical flow to it that forces the listener to take a step back, to see the musical forest through the proverbial trees. Not to say that the songs all sound the same, but each track has more in common with the movements of a symphony than they do individual songs on a pop-rock record. There are musical and lyrical themes that thread their way through each song, linking them together to form a larger work, with the high-level of musicianship provided by the band acting as a guide that leads the listener through each harmonic twist and melodic turn.
One of the most interesting aspects of the album is the vocal “messages” that are found strewn throughout the album. A month after announcing that he had begun the project, Lucassen sent out a message on his website soliciting fans to send him short, audio messages in that persons mother tongue, along with a written translation. After receiving over two-hundred submissions, Lucassen narrowed it down to nineteen audio samples that he would use on the record.
The examples that Lucassen chose, and that can be heard on the album, represent a myriad of languages that include French, Russian, Chinese and Tagalog. The inclusion of these audio clips only adds to the continuity between the tracks. Even though the listener may not understand what is being spoken, they act as a “narrative” of sorts that helps tell the story behind the album.
Guilt Machine front man Arjen Lucassen recently sat down with Guitar International Magazine to discuss his latest project, the timelessness of Prog-Rock music and where his music is headed from here.
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Matt Warnock: On This Perfect Day is the first release by your new project Guilt Machine. Could you tell us about how the group came together for this project?
Arjen Lucassen: Every album I make is basically a reaction to the album I made before that. In this case it was the Ayreon album 01011001 which was this huge rock-opera album. I had seventeen singers on it, all kinds of different styles and a big, complicated science-fiction storyline. I can safely say now that I overdid it a little bit. There were too many singers on it, there was just not enough space for all these singers and it was getting all too complicated and a bit too over the top.
So I really wanted to do something very different, something smaller with only one singer, no science-fiction concept and no difficult storyline. Having one singer was kind of a challenge for me. I’m used to working with many different singers, so for every emotion I want to convey I could use a different singer. It’s kind of a luxury. I needed one singer who could do it all, the soft emotional parts but also the high-energy parts. I also wanted a singer that wasn’t well known on the Prog and Metal scenes, because then people would have certain expectations from the project, which I didn’t want.
I ended up finding a Belgian singer, Jasper Steverlinck, who is in a band called Arid. A fan sent me an email and suggested that I check out Jasper, who they said sounded a bit like Freddie Mercury. So I went to his MySpace page and I was blown away by his singing, I then went to a live show and he was even better on stage. I was convinced immediately that he was the right singer for the gig, but it was harder to convince him. It’s always hard for me to convince singers from outside the Prog and Metal worlds to work on one of my projects. They often feel that they’ll have to change their styles, or sing something they’re not vocally comfortable with. But he realized that that wasn’t going to be the case and he said yes, luckily.
For the drummer, Chris Maitland, I’ve always been a big Porcupine Tree fan, and during all those years of watching him drum in the band I noticed he had this great mix of power and groove. I almost worked with him back in 2000, on an Ayreon album, but it didn’t work out. So when I had the chance to work with him on the Guilt Machine album I took it. I needed someone who could be intense, but also bring out all the subtle nuances that I was trying to convey, and Chris could do that perfectly.
Lori, the final member of Guilt Machine, is kind of an obvious choice since she’s my manager, and partner in life, but most important of all she’s an amazing guitarist. I really love her style as a player, and she ended up doing an amazing job writing the lyrics for the album.
Matt: Did she write all of the lyrics on her own, or did the two of collaborate a bit throughout the writing process?
Arjen: We didn’t collaborate at all. What we did was, I would record guide vocals for the songs, but with nonsense lyrics. Just to give her a sense of the melody. I would never play those tracks for anyone, they’re just bullshit lyrics. Laughs. So she could get the rhythm of the words and the meter, but she was completely free to write her own lyrics. Sometimes I would let her know that I didn’t think something fit, or I wanted something a little bit different, but other than that she had complete freedom, and really did an amazing job with the lyrics.
Matt: I noticed on the back of the album that you’re credited with playing “other instruments and vocals.” Could you elaborate on exactly what instruments you played on the album?
Arjen: Yeah, I played all the rhythm guitar parts. I played bass guitar and basically all of the keyboards on the album. I play only analog keyboards, so no digital stuff, so everything you hear on the album is a Hammond, mini-Moog and Mellotron, all the old analog keyboards. I also played mandolin on one of the songs, I think that’s about it.
Matt: The new album has kind of an orchestral feel to it. You use a lot of layering, textures and dynamics, things that are commonly found in Classical music. Were you ever influenced by Western Classical music?
Arjen: Strangely enough I don’t listen to Classical music at all. I did however listen to a lot of Prog music, bands that were in turn influenced by Classical music. Groups like Emerson, Lake and Palmer were completely influenced by Classical music, so I know most Classical music through ’70s Prog bands. It’s true though, that I’m more influenced by melodic music than riff-based music.
I do enjoy riff-based music, such as Van Halen and ACDC that kind of stuff, but I really prefer melodic music. For me, personally, to listen to and to make, music should be really adventurous. When I’m on stage it’s completely different, I want to play riff music, I want to play loud and make noise. Laughs. When I’m recording though, I want to make music that has layers and textures.
Matt: The album is meant to be listened to front to back, as a whole rather than as a group of singles. Though album oriented rock was immensely popular several years ago, it seems that bands these days are more concerned with singles than with a cohesive album. What has been the reaction by fans and critics to you writing albums in this fashion?
Arjen: Well, it’s what I’ve always done. Again, I come back to the ’70s Prog-Rock stuff, where you have Jethro Tull doing Thick as a Brick, which is basically a forty minute long song. Those are my influences. My main project, Ayreon, is like a rock-opera, it’s comparable to Tommy or The Wall, so it’s meant to be listened to as a story, from beginning to end.
Again, I come back to what I said earlier, music should be adventurous. It shouldn’t be about listening to one track and then moving on to the next band. My music isn’t meant to be listened to while doing the dishes. People should put on their headphones, lie back and experience the whole album. Which these days, is hard because what happens is that people go to MySpace and listen to a few seconds of each track and then move on. If people do this with Guilt Machine they’ll think, “oh nothing’s happening, time to move on.” Laughs.
It’s definitely difficult, my music, but luckily I’ve been making this type of music since the ’90s so I’ve been able to build a fan base all over the world. My fans trust me, they buy it and they check it out fully. If a new band tried to do this type of music, without a strong following, I don’t think they’d be able to do it, which is a shame.
Matt: It seems that Prog music is kind of becoming popular again, after being pushed aside by Grunge and Alternative rock in the ’90s. Have you noticed this “old is new” sort of thing happening as well?
Arjen: I think Prog music is timeless in a way. If you look at Punk, which in 1976 was supposed to have pushed away Prog, but it just shifted the attention away from Prog for a bit. It was always there, it is still there and it will always be there, it’s timeless music. It’s not a trend, because it is good music, because it is adventurous and because it doesn’t belong to any era.
What Dream Theater is doing could have been done, with less technicality, in the ’70s as well. People are starting to recognize it now, that it is cool music, that it is timeless. There is a resurgence in that style of music with bands like Dream Theater, who are taking the ’70s Prog stuff and making it their own. I think if people just copy it than it’s no good, but if they update the sound, then it’s a great thing. I think it’s great that this music is becoming cool again.
Matt: When writing the new album you invited your fans to be a part of that process by soliciting them to send you audio samples of quotes that related to the album’s theme of guilt. Could you talk about how that concept came about and how it evolved from an idea to the nineteen examples that were included on the album?
Arjen: I don’t play live anymore, so I like to involve the fans in what I’m doing. On the last Ayreon album I had seventeen singers and each time I recorded a singer I put a sample online and people had to guess who it was. It was great, people really enjoyed it, and those who guessed right won a CD and stuff. So I’m always involving the fans in the process.
For this record I started to think that since we had the concept of guilt on the album, maybe fans could send in quotes from their own lives that we could print in the album cover. After a while I began to think that it would be really cool to have people send in audio clips of themselves speaking that we could use on the album. Other bands have done that type of thing, most famously Pink Floyd on Dark Side of the Moon, which I always found interesting. So we did it and to our surprise we received over two-hundred messages, which was great, but it was very hard to choose which ones we would include.
We had tears in our eyes after hearing some of these messages because people were really putting their raw emotions into them. But, we ended up choosing nineteen messages in nineteen different languages and I put them on the album. It really worked for me, if it hadn’t of worked I wouldn’t have done it. I think it really adds to the emotional quality of the album, it gives it a personal touch.
Matt: You released three different versions of the album. Is this another way that you’re trying to involve your fans, since you don’t perform live anymore?
Arjen: Yeah, I want to give them a little bit more, because they can’t see us live, it’s great to give them a look behind the scenes. In this case there are interviews, video clips and extra songs. Fans get to see the band and get an idea of what we’re like. Though, not everyone wants to have that stuff, so we also released a regular CD for those fans.
There’s also the special edition DVD/CD, with all the great digital artwork, and there’s the limited edition, which people have always enjoyed. There are only a small number of prints of the limited edition, and we sign them all, so it’s something we like to do for the fans that really enjoy having a limited edition album.
Matt: With the success of the first Guilt Machine album are you planning to work with the group again in the future? Where are you heading from here, musically speaking?
Arjen: Well, as I said, each album I make is a reaction to the previous album, so right now I’m planning on doing a pretty heavy album, because this album was more atmospheric and more developmental. It will probably be a follow up to an album I did a while back called Space Metal, with my Star One project.
It’s Metal and all the songs are based on Science-Fiction movies, which will be my next project. I really enjoyed the Guilt Machine project, it was very relaxing to work on. With Ayreon you can imagine how stress full it can be to work with seventeen singers, just the logistics can be a handful. So I would love to do a second Guilt Machine album in the future.
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Links
On This Perfect Day (Deluxe Edition)
On This Perfect Day (Export) on Amazon
