Earth & Fire: Atlantis (1973)

1973’s Atlantis was the third album by Earth & Fire, and without a doubt their most Mellotron heavy album ever. Again the band explores another concept: the rise and destruction of Atlantis, all told on the first half of the album. The side-length title track sounds more or less like a collection of separate songs as often there are silent gaps between them. Whatever the case, it’s the theme that ties together this piece. Guitar and Mellotron starts off the whole thing, then the music mellows out with acoustic guitar and Jerney Kaagman’s voice. The Mellotron is often quite present throughout this side-length piece, and the album. There are a couple of passages which are much more aggressive, especially “Destruction (Rumbling from Inside the Earth)”, which obviously makes sense, given its about Atlantis’ final destruction. You will hear themes recur, like the end part called “Epilog (Don’t Know)” which was a reprise of “Prologue (Don’t Know)”.

The second half consists of mostly unrelated stuff, but the material is excellent. First off is the pop-oriented “Maybe Tomorrow, Maybe Tonight”, which was released as a single and became a hit in Holland. It’s a great piece full of more great Mellotron work. “Interlude” is an instrumental piece, very much dominated by Gerard Koerts’ Mellotron, although Chris Koerts (his twin brother) gives some nice guitar work with the wah-wah effect. Then comes the epic “Fanfare”. The lyrics are about the instruments in a brass band, but Gerard Koerts really lays it on thick with Mellotron, especially those brass sounds. Earth & Fire was one of the rare bands to use the M300 model of Mellotron (the Moody Blues, Barclay James Harvest and Gentle Giant all used one, and apparently Rick van der Linden when he was with Ekseption, although one gets the suspicion that the M300 he used was the same one Earth & Fire used, and was likely Phonogram Studio’s Mellotron, Phonogram being the Hilversum studio that both Earth & Fire and Ekseption had recorded in). “Theme From Atlantis” is obviously a theme from the title track, this time revisted on the second half of the album. “Love, Please Close the Door” is the closing acoustic piece, a nice piece to close the album.

Atlantis is often thought of as the companion piece to Song of the Marching Children (1971), their previous album, and for a good reason, they go together well, have similar themes, heavy use of Mellotron, and obviously Earth & Fire at the top of their game. Atlantis features some really stunning artwork, and if you get the original LP (with gatefold), you get treated with even more stunning artwork, with no print to interfere with it (aside from the Polydor logo, which was the label the band recorded for, the original LP came with an insert that had song listings, lyrics, and members of the band and what they played).

There is no doubt about it, both Song of the Marching Children and Atlantis are the two albums you should get from Earth & Fire.