Short Reviews [Atlantropa Project - 2017 - "Atlantropa Project"]

The real Atlantropa Project was an idea put forward by engineer Herman Sorgel in 1920, as he felt it would be a great idea to build a huge dam at Gibraltar, drain the Mediterranean and join together Africa and Europe and create everlasting peace. For some reason this idea was never accepted and acted upon, but in the years immediately after the Great War there were many different ideas being proposed to hopefully prevent such an event taking place again. A group of musicians decided that it would be a great concept for an album, so worked together and produced this, which was released at the end of 2017. It is interesting to note that one of those involved is Heinz Kuhne, who was guitarist and singer in cult German progressive rock band Waniyetula who were formed in 1969 and released two albums before their ultimate demise in the Eighties. This is a studio project as opposed to a band, brought together to tell this one story (with a narrator of course), but it actually works quite well. Released as a digipak, with a booklet containing all the lyrics, it comes across as a nice presentation (some detail on the actual project itself wouldn’t have gone amiss however) and the album feels very polished indeed. Layers of keyboards and sound effects, combined with good guitar and vocals, does make this a fairly interesting release, but in many ways it feels quite sanitised. There isn’t enough warmth and dept throughout the album to make it emotionally satisfying, and for some reason it reminds me of science fiction films that really don’t make the grade. There is a sterile cleanliness which really pushes the thinking that this is a studio only project which will never let the music see the light of day. It is pleasant, but is never anything more than that.