Ambeon: Fate of a Dreamer

Fate of a Dreamer

Best song: Cold Metal

Worst song: Lost Message

Overall grade: 6

There are some records which are completely unique. You don’t know where they come from and there’s certainly nothing else that draws on them, which can be puzzling because they’re often really, really good, but in reality it just adds to their mystique. I don’t think this is something you’d be likely to just discover, seeing as it’s completely uncommercial, semi-ambient at times, and was out of print for years. You could be recommended it, or you could listen to unconventional independent online radio like I do, hear a song from it there and be completely entranced.

As soon as that happened I knew I had to hear the whole thing as quickly as possible. Which I did, and it’s really quite an overwhelming listening experience; it feels almost spiritual in places. It comes from Arjen Anthony Lucassen, the main guy behind a prog metal band called Ayreon (and not a particularly well-respected one, I don’t believe) who decided to rework some of his own tunes and turn them into an ambient album. Along the way, he discovered a 14-year-old Dutch vocalist and basically realised she was a perfect fit for the music, so he brought her in to sing and write lyrics, and this is the only product of their collaboration.

So, songs… only two of these remained as the original instrumentals, and vocals feature to varying degrees on all the others. For example, you’ve got the opener, ‘Estranged’, which is almost entirely focused on the singing, except for that pretty flute part that opens it up. The instrumentation here is very sparse to showcase the beautiful voice – it’s hard to believe she’s so young. But on the second track, ‘Ashes’, the other parts come more into their own. Listen to the fast, jumpy guitar and the crashing drum at the beginning.

There’s a creepy sound of children playing that links the second and third songs. Actually, the segues are in general perfect on this album. There’s never a need for pauses, each song just slowly becomes the next, which isn’t always easy to pull off. Once we’re into it, ‘High’ is a really good song, but it doesn’t have the same detached, unreal feel as the first two: it could have been someone else’s song, which I don’t find with most of what’s on here, so it’s a bit less interesting for that.

‘Cold Metal’ is spectacular, though. The drums are intimidating and ominous, and the vocals sound tortured and terrified. The instrumental middle section starts off fast and crazy but suddenly goes all quiet, and then these wordless vocals come in, and they’re even more chilling than when lyrics were involved – think ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’. Apparently this song was a single. I can’t imagine anyone buying an Ambeon single.

The first instrumental, ‘Fate’, takes a very long time to build up. For a while it holds you there, suspended in anticipation. It’s an exercise in atmosphere and mood, using tricks like a hurried drum tap that sounds like running away, and a very quiet piano part that you have to strain to hear, but none of this is really ambient music because it messes with your mood. You certainly don’t want to tune it out and do other things while you listen.

The vocals come back for ‘Sick Ceremony’ and they’re still so powerful and evocative, but it’s just been proven they’re not necessary to make these songs great! In fact, the first song that doesn’t sound fresh to me is ‘Lost Message’, which is superfluous because it doesn’t do anything the other songs don’t also. That disappoints me. ‘Surreal’ might do too, I’m not sure. The title is perfect, it feels very cold and clinical like a nightmare, but I can’t help thinking that the melody’s familiar to me from somewhere.

To finish off there’s just ‘Sweet Little Brother’, a twisted fairy tale that freaks me out and I don’t like to think about late at night, but it certainly makes an impression, and ‘Dreamer’. It’s mostly instrumental (not as stunning as the earlier one though) and it has some strange sound effects that sound like children’s toys that have turned against them. Some more wordless vocals come in after about three and a half minutes, but they’re very pushed back. In fact, the whole piece feels like it gets further and further away, like it’s coming from behind a screen… right up to that choral-sounding a cappella vocal ending. I can’t recommend this whole thing highly enough. It’s beautifully crafted and beautifully produced to give it a ghostly, ethereal sound.

At first it seems like a tragedy that this is the only album recorded by this pair, but maybe it’s for the best. After all, it’s a bit of a one trick pony, just the combination of great soundscapes with a great voice, and a lot of albums of the same might not have the devastating effect that this outlier does.