ATLANTICPOPES

Max: a big fish maybe or a lizard.

Bernhard: That sounds like the ultimate question you can ask an artist/musician. 
For me, success is first and foremost, like for any other person, a sense of achievement.
You have achieved something, you have made something, created something, so that you are satisfied with it. In my case, that means making a song the way I imagined it. Sometimes different from what I imagined, but with a satisfying result.
THAT is what I consider success.
Everything else is the “outer” success. But that is defined by others.
I can’t say whether it’s a greater success when I see that our song has 1,000,000 streams or when I get a personal message that our song has changed someone’s life. In any case, the second is more touching. But seeing that many people hear it is also a good and successful feeling. For me, there is no magic formula for any kind of success. Imagining it definitely helps.

Max: Firstly, finishing a piece of music against all odds – internal and external – and being happy with it. Secondly, all the feedback from others who enjoy listening to it.
It can’t have anything to do with money, because I haven’t had any significant income from music until today. Not my talent.
I don’t have a key to what success means to me, but a big help in any case is not being depressed.

Bernhard: Something that touches. That can be anything. A melody, the lyrics, the groove, a vocal performance, a single sound, a riff, the overall sound that holds everything together. You only know afterwards. When the song is finished.
And then you believe that everything was important. And even if that’s not true, one thing leads to another and nothing can stand alone.

Max: Yes, the most beautiful thing is when it touches you.

Bernhard: Another ultimate question. And this question is impossible to answer. There are messages, in every song. A different one in every song. Is there an overarching message? Definitely! Even several. But it would spoil the fun of the music for me if we gave away these messages or even paraded them in front of me. Everyone who listens to the music will find the message themselves. Or has his own interpretation. That can be just as true. In any case, our intention is to touch.

Max: I agree.

Bernhard: In general, there is not much difference between the old and the new songs. Maybe the new songs radiate more warmth and serenity.

Max: Maybe they are a bit more mature, I hope they are somehow better.

Max: I am a very visual musician, I really enjoy putting sounds and images together. Until now, I always had an idea immediately when it was said “We need another cover…”. Sometimes the essence comes from another artist, as with Hold On, Morningson, Tres and In The Arts, sometimes I do it all by myself – e.g. Man in The Moon, sometimes I browse through archives of footage providers until I come across something interesting…. Typography is also a topic that has always occupied me.

Bernhard: The profession of a musician is a very serious profession. You don’t experience any funny stories. You sit in the studio around the clock, without daylight, with a serious face, trying to remember what “life” is all about. At the very beginning, 40 years ago, the first thing I learned was what the two biggest lies in the music business are: 
The cheque is in the post!
We’ll fix it in the mix!
The third lie would be:
Being a musician is fun.

Max: Ha ha ha. I can’t think of one right now either.

There was no break for us. We have always been in friendly and creative contact during these 20 years. However, we have only ever been able to meet sporadically to make music together. 
This had many reasons that you could write novels about and it also frustrated us a bit at times, but actually we ourselves are completely amazed at how quickly this time has passed.

A song is like a baby. You feed it, you raise it, and at some point you have to find the courage to let it go. 
We tend to delay that moment.
Until that day when everything feels right like a given.

To be completely honest, we have very different tastes in music. At least that’s what we both believe most of the time. 
In truth, it is probably only nuances.
Nevertheless, it’s very amazing that we manage to make our music together, almost completely stress-free. 
Very rarely do we get on each other’s nerves with our exotic preferences. 
Maybe that’s why we talk so rarely about other music.  

Hey Esther, never say never, BUT…for the moment it is not up for discussion at all. Our focus is still on creating new songs in our sound lab.

Hey John, there is no planned release date so far, the album is in the making but not yet completely finished.

To be honest, although we are continuously working on it, sometimes we wish it would go faster. All songs are already written, but the process of finishing them makes them emerge again in a way. How long this will take in the end is, in a way, out of our hands.

We are planning a “normal” album as vinyl and CD, but maybe it will also be a double CD with additional tracks (demos and remixes). From our point of view, a DVD makes little sense nowadays. 

Hey Outsider, we met for the first time in Berlin in 1989. Max was looking for a producer for his former project “Echo Romeo” and Bernhard somehow in the mood for adventure and a new musical challenge. He liked Max’s voice and vocals from the beginning and was inspired by the diversity of his songs. Max, for his part, was kicked by a wealth of shared musical inclinations and preferences.

Once we were sure of the key requirements for a collaboration, we took time off to work on the project on the South-West Coast of France. While Max took the culinary responsibility, Bernhard responded with seductive sounds…the perfect matching.

After the creation phase in France the album was recorded at the legendary LunaPark Studio in Berlin and later finished in Bernhard’s home studio. Then in the late 90’s they gave the baby its name before releasing the first Atlantic Popes album in 2001…

Hey Abril, good question! Which pope is which?
At the very beginning, over 20 years ago, it was not quite clear. We then let the fans decide in a voting on the old AtlanticPopes website who is which pope. It was decided that Max is the purple/pink pope and Bernhard is the golden/yellow pope. Accordingly, the pope robes were tailored at that time.
One of these robes can be admired in the official “Hold on” video.

Hey Abril, They were designed and lovingly made by Brigitte Haarke, a dear old friend of Max and fashion designer from Berlin.

Hey @paul.bernd_josch.fan, Max would dedicate „Morningson“ to Bernhard. Bernhard would dedicate „Ice“ to Max.

Hey Andres, Sorry, no experience.  We only take hard drugs.

Hey Claudia, The Atlantic feels like home to us. Especially the southwest coast of France with its endlessly long and wide sandy beaches and the sometimes smoky sea exudes a very unique romanticism. There we started to work together intensively and wrote and pre-produced a large part of the first album. 
In the word “Popes” there is the word “Pop”. And „Pop” is what we wanted to do. Furthermore, we found it exciting to question the uniqueness of the Pope. There is always only one. But we think that EVERYONE is a pope.

Hey Warren, People are different, some believe in coincidence, others in destiny and fate. 
It was certainly more fate than a planned collaboration. Someone brought us together with the idea that we could try to make music together, but it immediately developed an absolutely unique momentum. We met for the first time in Berlin at the end of the 80s. In a restaurant on Kurfürstendamm.

Hey @jotajuancho, Bernhard’s influences come from the time of postpunk and it new waves in the late 70s/early 80s. Especially through the early British electronic bands. And of course from Kraftwerk, Roxy Music and of course David Bowie. 
Max is influenced by everything he liked to hear, but nothing so much that he would want to emulate it willy-nilly. He also loves jazz since early childhood and today he listens a lot to African and other world music.

Hey Helen, You can’t really give an answer to that. The universe? The enthusiasm? The creative spirit that breathes into you?
There is no source where you can go and help yourself. It comes from oneself. The external stimuli can be very diverse and must fall on their own fertile ground. 
Max likes to start from inner silence in front of a blank page…

Hey @vahidhajid, We want to make pop music. Very mainly electronic pop music. All other stylistic classifications are quite indifferent to us. That’s in the eye of the beholder. We are not fans of narrow pigeonholing. We are open-minded, no ideologists and yet our music should sound unmistakably like us. Call it what you want.

Hey @dj_quatschis_vinyls, We are still in the middle of the work on the second album. When it’s completely finished, it will also be available on CD and Vinyl. It still takes a little while. In addition, the lead time for vinyl production worldwide is insanely long right now.

Hey Carlos, hey @kendo8714, hey @xoplasma, hey @alphaville80s_pics,
At the moment we are not really thinking about live performances, let alone a tour. We would have to think of something special. A somewhat more elaborate concept. That’s not on the agenda at the moment. But you should never say never. Of course it’s not out of the question. UK and Sweden would be a very enjoyable and worthwhile destination for a tour! 

Hey Silvana, Yes. That’s definitely the plan. Promised!

Hey Mike, Neither of us has ever had the idea of covering another song. We see ourselves less as interpreting artists, but more as artists who create something completely new. Whereby one must not overinterpret “new”. There is only very rarely something really “new”. As a rule, one is always inspired by something. We can’t think of a song to cover because we perceive music holistically and that’s exactly why we find it holistically great. If you like something all around, you don’t get the idea to remake it. But nevertheless we once did a cover version of “Ceremony” by New Order a long time ago (you can listen to it on Spotify). We did that because of an invitation to a tribute album for New Order.