NAME STOLEN

"I am not a man but a God / What I am you cannot get / I bring the darkness to your light / Stealing is my powerful right..." These dramatically half-whispered words begin an hour-long album sutitled "An Epic Tale of Crime and Corruption in the Land of Magick and Machinery". In a blindfold test it could be mistaken for a product of a 70's German band rivalling their contemporaries ELOY, GROBSCHNITT, NOVALIS etc. in the field of overblown epic albums soaked in esoteric and mystic flavours. But no. PROJECT, also known as PPRY, is a Finnish act of this Millennium, this being their first album.

The music is psychedelic, spacey and dark-toned. Great deal of it is instrumentally oriented, with that theatrical voice-over here and there, but luckily there are also several more 'normal' vocal songs - featuring pleasant vocal harmonies - to keep the whole in a balance. The retro sound is hazy and mellow in all its gloominess, comparable to e.g. ORNE. Even though the 16 tracks are mostly pretty short, they flow in a seamless manner. The way to divide every other main title into 2-4 parts looks rather self- indulgent, especially with long titles such as 'A Song for the Desert - A Song for the Fallen', (c) 'The Irrational Reports a Spectacular Loss of Apparatus for the Ill Substance'. Phew. By the way that particular 7-minute track gets VERY Floydian, strongly resembling the spooky mid-section of 'Sheep'. I find such allusions only interesting!

This work is shamelessly deriative and perhaps even laughably dead-serious in spirit, but totally charming for those who enjoy dark, psychedelic, PINK FLOYD -influenced, mellow sounding 70's European prog.