{"id":9813,"date":"2012-06-22T07:00:20","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=9813"},"modified":"2022-01-06T19:52:43","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:52:43","slug":"album-review-arjen-lucassen-lost-in-the-new-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=9813","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Arjen Lucassen – Lost in the New Real"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Arjen Lucassen – Lost in the New Real<\/strong>
\n Release Date:<\/strong> May 8, 2012<\/strong>
\n Highlights: The whole album<\/strong><\/p>\n

Concept albums are hard to pull off.\u00a0 In order to do it well, you have to have much more than just a story.\u00a0 In addition to the story, the songs have themselves must be good, engaging, and able to stand on their own.\u00a0 When I settled down, put my headphones on and began to listen to Lost in the New Real<\/em>, the latest opus by Dutch composer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and producer Arjen Lucassen, I was immediately sucked into his world.<\/p>\n

Lost in the New Real<\/em> tells the story of a modern man by the name of Mr. L.\u00a0 Mr. L was cryopreserved at the moment of clinical death from a terminal disease. The album begins as Mr. L is being revived at a point in the distant future when technology has advanced enough to cure his disease. Mr. L finds himself in a world that has drastically changed.\u00a0 Mr. L finds himself in a time way in the future where we, as a society, have lost control of technology.\u00a0 Mr. L, with the help of his appointed psychological adviser finds himself trying to adapt to this new world.\u00a0 He struggles to live in this new place and to accept that the way we experience life and nature, the way we procreate, and even the way we listen to music has all drastically changed.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The opening song, \u201cThe New Real\u201d, sets the pace for this ethereal journey with its meditative tones, pulsing rhythms, and the trippy, mellow vocals of Arjen.\u00a0 Half way through this song I realized that this was going to be more than just listening to an album. This was going to be an experience like no other.\u00a0 \u201cPink Beatles in a Purple Zeppelin\u201d has Arjen predicting that eventually we will be able to create new music just by thinking of different artists in our minds and combining them to create all new music.\u00a0 It\u2019s really ingenious yet it\u2019s absolutely horrifying to think that technology may be heading that way.\u00a0 While the music aspect of the concept is what seems stand out, Arjen also addresses things like overpopulation (\u201cParental Procreation Permit\u201d), music piracy (E-Police), and bringing the concept to a close with \u201cLost in the New Real.\u201d\u00a0 This song closes with Mr. L remember where it was he came from while expressing his frustration of being \u201cbrought back like a lab rat.\u201d\u00a0 This closing track had me feeling like I could be hearing a sequel to this story and I wouldn\u2019t be against that one bit.<\/p>\n

Disc II of Lost in the New Real<\/em> consists of original songs and covers that, while not part of the concept of Disc I, they are somewhat related to it.\u00a0 Arjen included some outstanding cover such as a gorgeous \u201cBattle of Evermore (Led Zeppelin), \u201cVeteran of the Psychic Wars (Blue Oyster Cult) and my personal favorite, \u201cWelcome to the Machine\u201d by Pink Floyd which has been given a somewhat industrial treatment making it even more haunting than the original.\u00a0 That particular cover I feel would have been very much more suited to be part of the conceptual Disc I as it really relates back to the idea of technology taking over and creating music from our thoughts as touched on in \u201cPink Beatles in a Purple Zeppelin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arjen Lucassen very well could be the hard rock world\u2019s Roger Waters straddling the line between absolute genius and deranged madness. Arjen could be expressing a Nostradamus like prophecy or he could just be letting us deep into his mind, heart, and soul to see his own personal thoughts, fears, and excitement of just what the future may hold for us.\u00a0 Either way, Arjen Lucassen\u2019s Lost in the New Real<\/em> is something that anybody with a good mind, a good heart, and a good ear for music could and should get behind.\u00a0 This is an experience unlike any other and I can honestly say that this is a journey I will be taking more than once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arjen Lucassen – Lost in the New Real Release Date: May 8, 2012 Highlights: The whole album Concept albums are hard to pull off.\u00a0 In order to do it well, you have to have much more than just a story.\u00a0 In addition to the story, the songs have themselves must be good, engaging, and able to stand on their own.\u00a0 When I settled down, put my headphones on and began to listen to Lost in the New Real, the latest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,277],"tags":[796],"class_list":["post-9813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-music-news","tag-arjen-lucassen"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19824,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9813\/revisions\/19824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}