Everything has been recorded, Star One is starting to glow!

So when Gary offered to play another solo on one of my upcoming releases I didn’t hesitate for a moment, despite the fact that I usually don’t tolerate other guitarplayers beside me (especially not when they are so much faster than me ;O) I personally think his playing is a perfect combination of Eddie van Halen’s spontaneity, Steve Vai’s weirdness and Yngwie’s speed. Which doesn’t mean of course that Gary hasn’t developed a style of his own, when he sent me his solos for the Star One album I recognised his distinctive style immediately. His solos are great again, he can play all those things (with ease!) that I could never be able to play in my lifetime. In one song (Laserfight) he’s fighting a guitar/synth battle with Jens Johansson, you will be amazed at all this firework! Gary plays solos on two songs.

Which brings me to the next instrumentalist who sent me his keyboardsolos; Jens Johansson, who has played with the likes of Yngwie and Dio and plays in Stratovarius now. I had to listen to his solos (on 5 songs) about 10 times before I believed what I heard. If he would play any faster, he would go back in time! He called me up in the afternoon to ask me some details about the solos, and in the evening he sent the solos off to me by FedEx. He played all this amazing stuff in just a couple of hours…really sickening…is this guy human at all?

And of course an album of this tall hippie dude here wouldn’t be complete without these huge synthsolos by Erik Norlander. And this time they sound even bigger! He used his Mighty Modular Moog and I have to say that again he has surpassed himself with these powerful and melodic solos on Star One. Erik’s got the best synthsolo sound in the world, without a doubt. He plays solos on 4 songs.

And then I still had to play my own solos after having received all this virtuoso wizardry. Sigh…

I have also recorded all the singers now.

Some time ago I read an interview in a dutch metal magazine (Aardschok) with a guy called Dan Swano who said some nice things about Ayreon. I didn’t know who he was, so I listened to one of his albums (Nightingale) and liked what I heard. So I sent him an email, and before we knew it we were the best of friends who found out that we have a lot in common (and also disagree about a lot of things like digital synths!). I asked him to be the ’low voice’ on Star One and he gladly accepted. Despite his fear of flying he got on a plane to Holland. He felt right at home here and we started out by watching a great space movie (Stargate) on my new TV set. Next day we started recording and I found out that Dan is a great musican and singer. It was a joy working with him and we recorded some really weird stuff, sometimes with about 16 multiple voices on top of eachother! And we even recorded Dan’s secret elephant-impersonation (!), how low can one go? I didn’t expect him to be such a good musician (he also plays piano, guitar and drums), and I’m sure we’ll be hearing more of him in the future. I feel that he has yet to record his magnum opus that will astoun the music world, he’s got it in him.

The last singer I recorded was Symphony X’ Sir Russell Allen, our brave knight from the States. I got up at 4 in the morning and picked him up from the airport at 6 AM. We couldn’t find eachother in the airport and then we got stuck in traffic. When we got home at 11 he went to bed and he woke up at 10 in the evening. Then we started recording at midnight which was the afternoon for him, but he just woke up so it felt like morning for him, and I just skipped a night! Confused? Well, so were we. Suffice to say that we (both) had a lot of problems with the jet lag. But finally the last day he got adjusted to European time and he showed me all he’s got in him, behind the mic in my studio. And I can tell you, that is a *lot*! What a singer! And he’s really versatile; he’s got the blues-, the metal-, the ballad- and even the folksinger in his extensive repertoire. And I used them all. And besides that he is a really funny and energetic guy, the house was really quiet after he was gone… (more...)