Multinational collaboration AUDIO COLOGNE PROJECT consist of German composer and musician Uwe Cremer on guitars and keyboards and Hungary-based English composer and musician Dave Pearson on bass, keyboards and sequencers. With the aid of drummer Zsolt Galánta this creative duo recorded the material needed for their debut album “2911“, which was released in the summer of 2013.

The end result here is 75 or so minutes of instrumental progressive rock, with the majority of the material assembled in three massive, 15 minutes plus long epic compositions, with a few relatively short pieces wedged in between  these massive behemoths. Relatively, as only the final piece, a bonus track, clocks in at less than five minutes. And while there’s a fair deal of variety between the tracks on this disc, there are some fairly obvious traits shared between them too. Of the kind that should intrigue those with a soft spot for progressive electronic music.

Opening number Chemist’s Bike kicks of in a fairly typical classic hard rock manner, with organ textures strongly reminding of Deep Purple on top. Which is followed by a more ambient sequences driven section Tangerine Dream style and a dreamladen, dark art rock passage closer to the likes of Pink Floyd. When this trio has been presented, the rest of this composition blends them with each other in different manners, reaching a conclusion carrying traces from all of them.

Crazy Bongos, which doesn’t really feature any crazy drumming in the limelight, is a tight and energetic affair with a strong and distinct bass and guitar foundation with frail, fleeting guitar and keyboard details on top, where calmer inserts lets the latter take the center stage while the rhythm foundation calms down or perhaps has a beer break or something. It’s a piece that airs off driven, compact and energetic arrangements with ones of a more ambient and dreamladen nature, where Ozric tentacles and Tangerine Dream might be pushed to the front in the similarities department, albeit not in a big way.

Spieluhr, the most compelling as well as the longest composition on this production, continues in a somewhat similar manner, with more of an emphasis on moods of a more delicate manner perhaps, and with some eastern inspired details and possibly some sentiments pointing towards Pink Floyd as well, with a wind-up toy music detail as an effective recurring feature. An inspired creation it is though, and arguably the composition at hand with strongest similarities towards the more accessible parts of Tangerine Dream’s back catalog to boot.

Grobmotorik kicks off in a manner that reminds strongly of Levitation era Hawkwind, and then shifts to a gentler expression residing at the halfway point between Kraftwerk and Vangelis to my ears, again a combination that works well, although for me personally the inital sequence with it’s more energetic and tightly controlled nature was just a tad more compelling.

Mind the Gap have structural similarities to the previous piece, opening in a more energetic manner, albeit alternating between moods of different intensity rather than exploring a strictly high intensity construction in the early phase, with some nice jazz-tinged details in the more delicate phases. Dreamladen arrangements closer to the likes of Pink Floyd and the a smoother, almost ambient mood are the next stages of this epic piece, again with at least some nods in the direction of Tangerine Dream unless I’m much mistaken, but the overall more delicate atmosphere of this particular piece makes me suspect that there are similarities to some of the artists I haven’t really explored in full here, such as Jarre or possibly Oldfield.

Concluding this album is a bonus track, Akustisch-1, that opens with Spanish sounding acoustic guitars and is fleshed out by smooth keyboards, sequences and dreamladen guitar soloing. A short, concise and spirited affair that ends this disc in a nice and fairly logical manner.

All in all this is a fine production that should appeal strongly to those who enjoy progressive electronic music and progressive rock of the instrumental variety. Fans of artists such as Tangerine Dream in general, and those amongst them with a taste for artists like Pink Floyd and Hawkwind in particular I’d suspect.

My rating: 88/100