Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976).The opener “May Be a Price to Pay” opens with a stirring trumpet fanfare. There is a tone of melancholy and regret that flows through the songs, even if they are sometimes close to danceable (“Games People Play”). This album serves as a kind of blueprint for Eye in the Sky, but the strengths of the albums are reversed, with the latter half of Turn being the stronger. The second half of the album is less substantial but still includes the excellent instrumental “Mammagamma” and closer “Old and Wise.” The first half of this album is a seamless, perfect blend of every strength the project had, opening with the evocative (and to sports fans, very familiar) instrumental “Sirius” before moving on to the hit “Eye in the Sky” and closing with the semi-epic “Silence and I.” For an example of how effective Powell’s orchestrations were, listen to the guide vocal by Eric Woolfson of the same track on the remastered album, which doesn’t include the orchestration. In any case, here’s how I rank their ten albums. I’m not a musicologist so I can’t really describe it better than that. The Alan Parsons Project, thanks in large part to Andrew Powell’s orchestrations, managed to wed the two types of music together in a complementary manner. I’ve also been a sucker for pop music backed by an orchestra, but it can be done well and it can be done very badly. I always kind of hoped they’d reunite one last time for another project but that never happened before Woolfson’s death in 2009.
#Alan parsons project best albums 2 full#
As so often in my youth I was late to the scene of this prog rock outfit that featured catchy pop songs often backed by a full orchestra, coming in on their seventh album, 1984’s Ammonia Avenue (thanks to the video for “Don’t Answer Me”.) I bought their next three albums and then the project broke up, with Parsons going off to actually tour the songs he’d been recording for the past decade and his partner Eric Woolfson turning to musicals.
Between 19 The Alan Parsons Project released ten albums, not bad for a band that was never really a band.
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