Ambeon is a mysterious and ambient project of Arjen Anthony Lucassen, and features a young, and very talented female vocalist, Astrid van der Veen. Though Arjen mistakenly called Ambeon a band in the [i]Ayreonauts Only[i] liner notes, he rectified that; it is a project of Astrid and Arjen.

Originally Arjen set out to record an ambient instrumental album based on certain electronic patterns, chords and melodies derived from the recorded tracks of existing Ayreon songs (to test his new studio hardware system). In the process some new songs evolved, and Arjen figured female vocals on one or two songs would add a warm human touch.

Arjen heard a recording of a 14-year young Dutch singer named Astrid van der Veen. This was exactly the voice he was looking for, and so he asked her to write lyrics and melodies to go over some of these re-constructed ambient tracks and then sing them. This arrangement worked out extremely well. So before he realized it the album had developed from an instrumental album with two vocal songs to a vocal album with two instrumentals.

To get as much outside input as Arjen could in order to not make it sound too much like an Ayreon album, he decided to involve several musicians who could bring in their own ideas, just like Astrid did. Stephen van Haestregt, who helped Arjen out with the technical issues of his new hard disk recording system, turned out to be a very good and versatile drummer.

The experienced Walter Latupeirissa (Snowy White, Steve Lukather, Pat Travers) played some great bass and fretless bass. And two guys from the band Celtus, John and Pat McManus, added to the folk atmosphere by playing flute, pipes and fiddle.

The name Ambeon is a combination of the words ambient and Ayreon.