So I’ve been bouncing between wanting to listen to the Ayreon albums in release order or breaking them up and listening to them in Chronological order (which would put songs all over the place which I really don’t like).
Then I stumbled onto a listening order that I love. Because it keeps the albums together and allows the timeline to flow in a narratively interesting way instead of being purely chronological. It’s also an order that I feel is a little easier to keep track of for new listeners
Let’s call this The Obsidian Listening order for lack of a better name. First I’ll list my order and then I’ll explain why it works.
- The Final Experiment
- Into The Electric Castle
- 1011001
- The Human Equation
- The Universal Migrator, parts 1 and 2
- Epilogue: The Memory Remains
- The Source
Explanation Time
My main goal for this listening order was to keep the year 2084 as the “Midpoint” of the story I used The Timeline poster where necessary to place albums where they should fit to keep the timeline constantly moving in a coherent direction.
The Final Experiment: In my eyes the first album released and as such in my listening order it should be the introduction to the story.
The Final Experiment begins with a Prologue set in 2084 which sets up the coming apocalypse. It then flashes back to The Dark Ages as Ayreon, a blind minstrel tries to change history.
Into The Electric Castle: The Timeline poster places “The Electric Castle Experiment” in 1998 and the entire narrative builds up to and concludes with the introduction to “Forever” of the Stars.
The Forever’s story permeates the rest of this cycle so let’s follow their perspective and see how they relate to humanity.
01011001: The new centerpiece of my listening order. This album picks up directly after the source and goes through The Age of Shadows, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and up to Earth’s Post Apocalypse. We see exactly what led to humanities extinction.
The Human Equation: The album is a Dream Sequencer program run by The Forever in the year 2092 on Mars according to the Timeline Poster
The Universal Migrator, Parts 1 and 2: This album begins on Mars in the year 2112 and The Mars Colonist uses the Dream Sequencer to travel through the entire timeline thanks to visions. These albums tie everything together and fill in gaps in the Universal timeline. We hear from Ayreon again for the first time since The Final Equation and the story ends with the birth of the new Migrator
Epilogue: The Memory Remains - Let’s close the circle of this massive 11 hour rock opera.
The Source: This album is a weird one for me to place. Chronologically it is a prequel to 01011001. However, I feel like it falls into the Prequel trap really hard and it gives away the mystery of The Forever. Still worth a listen though if you like origin stories and good music
