Stories of Mystery and Imagination is a studio debut album by the British rock band The Alan Parsons Project. It was released on May 1, 1976 in the United States by 20th Century Fox Records and on June 1, 1976 in the United Kingdom by Charisma Records. The lyrical and musical themes of this album, which recounted horror and poetry stories by Edgar Allan Poe, attracted audiences. The title of the album is taken from the horror story title of Poe with the same name .
The musicians featured on this album include vocalist Arthur Brown of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown on "The Tell Tale Heart", John Miles about "The Cask of Amontillado" and "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether," and Terry Sylvester of The Hollies on "To One In Paradise". Complete bands Ambrosia and Pilot played in the recording, along with keyboardist Francis Monkman of Curved Air and Sky.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination peaked at # 38 on the Billboard Pop Album chart, and the song "(The System Of) Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether" reached No. position. 37 on the Pop Singles chart.
Video Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Alan Parsons Project album)
Composition
"The Raven" featured actor Leonard Whiting on the lead vocals, with Alan Parsons performing vocals through EMI vocoder. According to the album's liner notes, "The Raven" is the first rock song to feature a digital vocoder. The introductory part of "The Fall of Usher House", though not described, is inspired by the opera fragment "La chute de la maison Usher" by Claude Debussy composed between 1908 and 1917. "The Fall of Usher House" is an instrumental suite that runs 16 minutes plus and take most of Side 2 of the recording.
Maps Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Alan Parsons Project album)
Artwork
The cover of this album is made by Hipgnosis. Storm Thorgerson said that Eric Woolfson and Parsons wanted a 'classy' design, including lyrical books, lengthy writings, and chronology of Poe's life. He describes the recurrent images of the 'affixed' man:
Poe is busy with the tomb. Many of his characters have been imprisoned in some form or another - in coffins, brick walls or under floor boards. We came in with a 'taped' man - a mummy-like figure wrapped, not in bandages, but on cassette 2. "This motif is partly horror, as well as 'buried', and 2" tape correctly indicates that the album was performed by the producer at studio, compared to the recording material the band will play on the stage. Although clients are interested in this idea, they do not want the image cover but prefer the right graphical representation. The narrow strip of illustrations from George [Hardie] shows a long shadow of the man being recorded.
The booklet (attached to the inside of the cover) consists of photographs relating to songs, and line drawings that explore the man being recorded as he wobbled in a limited world and attempted to unravel himself. The big pictorial letters continue the idea. The layout and drawings were made by Colin Elgie. Armor is one of our better efforts in combining photos and illustrations.
Reception
The critical reaction to the album is mixed; Billy Altman concludes that it does not completely accurately reproduce Poe's suspense and terrifying fears, ending by claiming that "Gothic literary fans will have to wait for someone with more than horrific in their blood for more musical readings right from Poe's often frightening work ". Nonetheless, the album is still amassing a bit of cult status among Alan Parsons Project fans. In July 2010, the album was crowned as one of the Rock Rock Classic ' s' 50's Prog Rock Built Album'.
Reissues
Originally simply called The Alan Parsons Project , the album was quite successful to achieve gold status. The identity of The Alan Parsons Project as a group cemented on the second album, I Robot, in 1977.
The original version of the album was available for several years on vinyl and cassettes, but not immediately available on CD (CD technology was not commercially available until 1982).
In 1987, Parsons completely remixed the album, including additional guitar parts and narration (by Orson Welles) as well as renewed production styles to include heavy reverb and drum sound reverb drum, popular in the 1980s. The CD notes that Welles never met Parsons or Eric Woolfson, but sent a recording to them about the show shortly after the album was produced in 1976.
The first section narrated by Welles on remix 1987 (which came before the first song, "A Dream Within a Dream") stems from an unclear nonfiction work by Poe - No XVI of his Marginalia (from 1845- 1849 Edgar Allan Poe entitled some reflections and fragmentary material "Marginalia.") The second part of Welles's reading (which came before the "Fall of Usher House") seems to be a partial paraphrase or composite of nonfiction by Poe, especially from a collection of poems entitled " Poetry of Youth "by Poe (listed in" Introduction to Poetry - 1831 "in the section entitled" Letter to Mr. B ----------- ";" The shadow of passing shadow "part of the quotation comes from Marginalia .
In 1994, the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL) released the original 1976 version on CD (UDCD-606), making it digital digitally for the first time.
In 2007, the Deluxe Edition released by Universal Music incorporated the 1976 and 1987 versions re-created by Alan Parsons during 2006 with eight additional bonus tracks.
Remake
The variant of the song "The Raven" appears on Eric Woolfson's Edgar Allan Poe (2009) album, which contains full music from Woolfson's musical stage in 2003 with the same name. The track variant does not appear on CD 2003 Woolfson Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination , which is a very short stage musical version. In the variant, the bass line and keyboard chords of the original Tales of Mystery and Imagination songs are heard, but they are quieter, not featuring vocoder, and instead of a shortened version of Poe's poems being sung, the Woolfson version features dramatic readings Oral more complete than poetry. Alan Parsons's album A Valid Path includes "A Recurring Dream Within A Dream", a mixture of "A Dream Within A Dream" and "The Raven" which combines the influence of electronic music.
Slough Feg covered "The Tell-Tale Heart" for their 2010 album The Animal Spirits.
Track list
All songs are written by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.
Orson Welles' narrative did not appear in the 1976 mix of albums. However, on the 1987 remix of "A Dream Within a Dream", Prelude of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "To One in Paradise".
deluxe 2007 edition
Disk 1 : Track 1-11, original album in mixture beginning of 1976
- "The Raven" (original demo)
- "Edgar" (demo of unreleased track)
- "Orson Welles Radio Spot"
- "Interview with Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson" (1976)
Disc 2 : Track 1-11, original album on remix 1987
- "Eric's Guide Vocal Medley"
- "Orson Welles Dialogue"
- "Sea Lions in Departure Lounge" (sound effects and experiments)
- "GBH Mix" (unreleased experiment)
Personnel
- Alan Parsons - Organ, Synthesizer, Guitar, Keyboard, Recorder, Vocal, Producer, Engineer, Proyron
- Eric Woolfson - Synthesizer, Harpsichord, Keyboard, Vocals, Vocals (background), Executive Producer
- Orson Welles - Narrator
- Dennis Clarke - Saxophone
- Leonard Whiting - Vocals, Narrator
- Arthur Brown - Vocals
- John Miles - Guitar, Vocal
- Jack Harris - Vocals
- Francis Monkman - Organ, Keyboard
- Kevin Peek - Guitar (Acoustic)
- Terry Sylvester - Vocals
- Laurence Juber - Guitar (Acoustic)
- Andrew Powell - Keyboard, Arranger
- David Paton - Guitar (Acoustic), Bass, Guitar, Vocals, Vocals (background)
- Ian Bairnson - Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar, Guitar (Electric)
- Chris Blair - Engineer Assistant
- Peter Christopherson - Photography
- David Katz - Violin, Leader, Orchestra Contractor
- Burleigh Drummond - Drum
- English Chorale - Vocals
- Bob Howes - Choir, Choir
- John Leach - Percussion, Vocals, Cimbalom, Kantele
- David Pack - Guitar
- Smokey Parsons - Vocals
- Joe Puerta - Bass
- Tony Richards - Engineer Assistant
- Jack Rothstein - Leader
- Daryl Runswick - Bass, String Bass
- David Snell - Harp
- English Chorale and Play Ti - Choir, Choir
- Stuart Tosh - Cymbals, Drums, Vocals, Tympani [Timpani]
- Tom Trefethen - Engineer Assistant
- Pat Stapley - Engineer Assistant
- Aubrey Powell - Photography
- Storm Thorgerson - Photography
- Hypgnosis - Design, Cover Art
- Sam Emerson - Photography
- Colin Elgie - Artwork, Graphic Design, Layout Design
- Billy Lyall - Piano, Drums, Glockenspiel, Keyboard, Recorder, Fender Rhodes
- Gordon Parry - Engineer
- Jane Powell - Vocals, Vocals (background)
- Les Hurdle - Bass
- Christopher North - Keyboard
Diagram
See also
- Edgar Allan Poe and music
- "Dream In Dreams"
- "The Raven"
- "The Tell-Tale Heart"
- "The Cask of Amontillado"
- "Tarr Doctor System and Professor Fether"
- "The Fall of Usher House"
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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