Showing posts with label The Alan Parsons Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Alan Parsons Project. Show all posts

Saturday, September 6, 2025

The Alan Parsons Project - Eve (1979)

Year: September 1979 (CD 1990)
Label: Arista Records (Germany), 258 981
Style: Progressive Pop, Soft Rock
Country: London, England
Time: 39:36
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 233 Mb

Like on "Turn of A Friendly Card", there are orchestral arrangements here. I'd rather be a man is excellent, with this usual discrete fast keyboards notes like on "Pyramid"'s HYPER-GAMMA-SPEEDS. You have the chance to hear the wonderful voice of Clare Torry (PINK FLOYD's Great gig in the sky) on don't hold back. My favorite one is probably "Secret Garden", where amazing loud bass, orchestral and vocal arrangements are played through fast and discrete keyboards. "If I Could Change The World" is a James Bond-esque main song, with beautiful female lead vocals. Most of the rest is very pop, accessible, rather addictive and well made: when ALAN PARSONS makes a pop song, he rarely misses his shot.
(https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=1094) Review by greenback. April 5, 2004. ****
Alan Parsons fourth album is a very weak one with only one good track, the opening instrumental Lucifer. The rest of the songs are so lacklustre, generic and middle-of-the-road that I find it difficult to find words to describe them in detail. The worst songs from the previous Pyramid album give you a very good idea of what the majority of the songs here sound like. Some are Disco-ish Pop tunes, others are Rock 'N' Roll numbers and yet others are mildly symphonic ballads. But nothing here comes even remotely close to Prog.
The concept this time - as we all know there is always a concept behind the Project's albums - is women, or rather perhaps the relation between men and women. 'Eve' obviously refers to that famous character in The Bible which according to that particular story was the very first woman ever. I'm not really sure whether this album is a bit sexist or not? Anyway, if Parsons and Woolfson wanted to make the point that women are evil, then they really succeeded to make an album that is from hell! I would say that Eve is the low-point of the entire career of the Alan Parsons Project.
(https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=1094) Review by SouthSideoftheSky. April 8, 2009. *
I'm on the outside looking in here; I have never considered the Alan Parsons Project to be that special of a group, and I fail to understand what it is that makes APP a prog rock band. EVE does not sound anything like a prog record to me; it has 80's pop music written all over it. Some of the dullest sounds I've ever heard on any album come from here. Not a single song stands out other than ''Damned If I Do'', and that song is just another slick pop hit. I would avoid this record if you enjoy lots and lots of prog rock.
(https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=1094) Review by Sinusoid. May 31, 2009, 2009. *


Album recorded and mixed in the analog domain - AAD. That is, a minimum of digital processing.
A=Analog. D=digital. The first letter stands for how the music was recorded. The second letter for how it was mixed. The third letter stands for the format (all CD's will have D as the last letter).

01. Lucifer (05:09)
02. You Lie Down With Dogs (03:48)
03. Id Rather Be A Man (03:54)
04. You Wont Be There (03:37)
05. Winding Me Up (04:02)
06. Damned If I Do (04:53)
07. Dont Hold Back (03:37)
08. Secret Garden (04:44)
09. If I Could Change Your Mind (05:48)

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Thursday, September 4, 2025

The Alan Parsons Project - Pyramid (1978)

Year: May 1978 (CD 1987)
Label: Arista Records (Germany), 258 983
Style: Progressive Pop, Soft Rock
Country: London, England
Time: 37:48
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 216 Mb

Alan PARSON is the king of catchiness and emotions here! No more sophisticated complex patterns. He proves here that complexity is not necessarily required to make an excellent album. All the songs are at least very good, and more: they are all very catchy and thus will retain your attention! That's a tour de force by PARSON! Sincerely, "Pyramid" is among my favorite ones from him. I have miscellaneous kinds of feelings when I listen to the tracks. "Voyager" was the theme of a jeans advertisement on TV; The poignant "What Goes Up" has a mix of romance, nostalgia and melancholy; The Elton JOHN esque "One More River" will give you a kick in the ass; The funny "Pyramania" will make you sing and beat the ground. "Hyper Gamma Spaces" announces a complete mastering of serious modern rythmic & melodic keyboards. You will notice that the lead & backing vocals are really among the main strength of this album.
(progarchives.com/album.asp?id=1093) Review by greenback. August 15, 2004

The material on this album is very lightweight, even in comparison with other works by the Alan Parsons Project. The opening creates an interesting atmosphere, but by the third similarly soft rock song in a row, this album cries out for a rocker. One More River is the first rocker on the album, but it is more of a Rock 'N' Roll number, very much in the vein of Elton John. Even the vocals sound like Elton's!
In The Lap Of The Gods is fairly interesting symphonic prog number, but still rather lightweight. Pyramania is so horrible that it hurts my brain! Skip this one unless you want to go seriously insane! Hyper-Gamma Spaces is an instrumental that could have been a theme song to some cartoon. The last song is a symphonic ballad, decent but rather forgettable.
As always with the Project, this album is very well-produced and overall very well-crafted. But that is not enough to make a good album. Only for fans and collectors this one.
(progarchives.com/album.asp?id=1093) Review by SouthSideoftheSky. December 3, 2008


Album recorded and mixed in the analog domain - AAD. That is, a minimum of digital processing.
A=Analog. D=digital. The first letter stands for how the music was recorded. The second letter for how it was mixed. The third letter stands for the format (all CD's will have D as the last letter).

01. Voyager (02:25)
02. What Goes Up... (03:31)
03. The Eagle Will Rise Again (04:22)
04. One More River (04:18)
05. Can.t Take It With You (05:04)
06. In The Lap Of The Gods (05:28)
07. Pyromania (02:44)
08. Hyper-Gamma-Spaces (04:19)
09. Shadow Of A Lonely Man (05:34)

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Monday, September 1, 2025

The Alan Parsons Project - I Robot (1977)

Year: 8 July 1977 (CD )
Label: Ariola Records (Germany), 259 651
Style: Progressive Pop, Soft Rock
Country: London, England
Time: 41:06
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 235 Mb

The album was intended to be based on the I, Robot stories written by Asimov, and Eric Woolfson spoke with Asimov himself, who was enthusiastic about the idea. As the rights already had been granted to a TV/movie company, the album's title was altered slightly by removing the comma in "I," and the theme and lyrics were made to be more generically about robots rather than to be specific to the Asimov universe. The cover inlay reads: "I Robot... The story of the rise of the machine and the decline of man, which paradoxically coincided with his discovery of the wheel... and a warning that his brief dominance of this planet will probably end, because man tried to create robot in his own image." The title of the final track, "Genesis Ch.1 v.32", follows this theme by implying a continuation to the story of Creation, since the first chapter of Genesis only has 31 verses.
According to the band's website, Paul McCartney unintentionally helped to inspire the song "Some Other Time". When Parsons had asked if McCartney could read a line of poetry for the band's first album in exchange for a favor Parsons had previously done him, McCartney replied by saying; "Some other time Alan, some other time". This gave the band an idea for a song title.
By pure coincidence, the album was released shortly after Star Wars came out in the United States. The group acknowledges that part of the album's success came from it being the only album with a robot on the cover during a time when robots were suddenly "all the rage".
The artwork was created by the English art design group Hipgnosis. The album cover photo features Storm Thorgerson's assistants in the escalator tubes of the circular Terminal 1 building of the Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris. The picture was taken without the permission of the airport management. Over this is superimposed a painting of a robot with a stylised atom for a brain. The robot also appears on the label of the record. The original vinyl release has a gatefold-style cover; the inside spread has the lyrics and a monochrome photograph of Parsons. The pose and angle of the photograph echoes that of the robot on the front cover.
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Robot_(album))

01. I Robot (06:02)
02. I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You (03:23)
03. Some Other Time (04:05)
04. Breakdown (03:52)
05. Don't Let It Show (04:21)
06. The Voice (05:23)
07. Nucleus (03:31)
08. Day After Day (The Show Must Go On) (03:49)
09. Total Eclipse (03:09)
10. Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32 (03:28)

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