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On March 31, The Alan Parsons Project’s many tales of mystery and imagination will come to life anew on Arista Records and Legacy Recordings’ 11-CD box set The Alan Parsons Project – The Complete Albums Collection. This new set marks the first time that the Project’s complete discography has been assembled in one place, from 1976’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination to 1987’s Gaudi. Sweetening the pot will be the first-ever release of the APP’s fifth album The Sicilian Defence.

The Complete Albums Collection follows the 2013 Legacy Edition reissue of I Robot, the APP’s 1977 sophomore effort and Arista debut. That album proved that high-concept, progressive art-rock could still impact the charts when it placed in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200. Further triumphs were still to come for the studio group spearheaded by producer-engineer Alan Parsons (The Dark Side of the Moon) and songwriter-executive producer Eric Woolfson, especially 1982’s Eye in the Sky. The album shot to No. 7 on the Billboard 200, the APP’s first album since I Robot to crack the Top 10, and the Woolfson-written and –sung title track made it all the way to No. 3 on the Hot 100 and the Hot AC chart.

The Scottish band Pilot provided the Alan Parsons Project with its core musicians. Ian Bairnson (guitar) played on every APP album, David Paton (bass and vocals) appeared on all albums except the 1987 swansong Gaudi, and Stuart Tosh (drums) played on Tales of Mystery and Imagination and I Robot before joining 10cc and being replaced by Stuart Elliott of Cockney Rebel. Pilot’s Billy Lyall also played keyboards on those first two APP albums. It was a bit of reciprocity at work; Parsons had produced Pilot’s debut album including the hit single “Magic,” and produced two more albums for the band as well. Vocalists on the APP albums include Woolfson, Lesley Duncan (the contemporary standard “Love Song,” recorded by artists including Elton John, Dionne Warwick, and Neil Diamond), Clare Torry (The Dark Side of the Moon), Allan Clarke of The Hollies, Colin Blunstone of The Zombies, Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, Lenny Zakatek, John Miles and others.

The main attraction of the new box may be an album that nobody has ever heard. The Sicilian Defence was created by Parsons and Woolfson over a three-day session at France’s Bear Studios and delivered to Arista Records in March 1981 amid tense contract negotiations between the Project and Clive Davis’ Arista label. The title derived from the name of a series of opening chess moves, which was apt considering the circumstances surrounding it. Reportedly a dissonant, atonal collection that was far-removed from what Davis expected of the band, The Sicilian Defence was shelved. The Project remained on Arista through 1987’s Gaudi, its final release. (Parsons and Woolfson resumed their collaboration on the 1990 album Freudiana, the studio cast recording of a Woolfson-composed rock opera.) An edited version of “Elsie’s Theme” from The Sicilan Defence was included as a bonus track on an expanded edition of the 1979 album Eve, but the full-length track and the album from which it was derived makes its first-ever appearance as part of this box set.

After the jump: what else can you expect from The Complete Albums Collection? Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Joe Marchese

January 30, 2014 at 14:22

Posted in Box Sets, News, Reissues, The Alan Parsons Project

Release Round-Up: Week of October 15

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Eric Clapton, Unplugged: Expanded and Remastered Edition (Reprise/Rhino)

The guitar god’s ’90s comeback was done on an acoustic. The Grammy-winning, best-selling album and the acclaimed episode of MTV Unplugged from which it was taken are paired up and considerably expanded, more than two decades later. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

King Crimson, The Road to Red (Panegyric)

Holy crumbs, this 21CD/1DVD/2BD set is a massive tribute to King Crimson’s Red album, including new stereo and surround mixes of the album and 16 soundboard-quality live sets in a box that puts the deluxe edition concept in its place. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Paul Simon, The Complete Albums Collection / Over the Bridge of Time: A Retrospective (1964-2011) (Legacy)

American tunes shine on both this exhaustive box set of Simon’s solo career, featuring expanded editions of all of his studio albums (including the U.K.-only The Paul Simon Song Book from 1964 and both Rhino and Legacy-era bonus tracks on Graceland), as well as the double-live Paul Simon’s Concert in the Park and 2011’s acclaimed So Beautiful or So What. A single-disc compilation boils his career down to its basest elements, from Simon & Garfunkel to the present.

The Complete Albums Collection: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
Over the Bridge of Time: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

James Booker, Classified: Remixed and Expanded (Rounder)

One of only two releases in the short but incredible lifetime of this New Orleans pianist, the man who mentored Dr. John and Harry Connick, Jr. is the focus of a new documentary – and this, his last proper studio album, is greatly expanded and remixed for a new generation to enjoy.

CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.
2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.

ABBA, Ring Ring: Deluxe Edition (Polydor/Universal U.K.)

The legendary dance quartet’s first album gets expanded with a DVD of rare performances and a host of even rarer pre-ABBA songs. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Various Artists, The Organization of Pop: Music from the First Thirty Years of ZTT Records (ZTT/Razor & Tie)

A double-disc compilation – the first in ZTT’s new U.S. distribution deal with Razor & Tie – featuring hits from Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The Buggles, The Art of Noise, Seal and more. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Al Hirt, The Sound of Christmas (Friday Music/Relayer)

The trumpet virtuoso’s 1965 holiday album, expanded and remastered by Friday Music, its first time on CD in over two decades. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Basia / Deborah Cox / Taylor Dayne / Exposé / Lita Ford / The Jeff Healey Band / The Jimi Hendrix Experience / Incubus / MercyMe / Mobb Deep / The Alan Parsons Project / The Partridge Family, Playlist: The Very Best Of (Legacy)

Another wave of the ol’ reliable series from Legacy. Key points: rare original single mixes abound on Basia, Deborah Cox, Taylor Dayne and Exposé’s volumes; Hendrix’s is a converted version of the famed Smash Hits compilation, and Partridge fans will enjoy the first-ever release of “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” in stereo. All Amazon U.S. links are posted above!

Deep Purple, The Complete Albums 1970-1976 (Warner Bros./Rhino)

This ten-disc set compiles all of the band’s original Mk. II, Mk. III and Mk. IV-era studio and live albums. (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

Written by Mike Duquette

October 15, 2013 at 08:33

Posted in 808 State, ABBA, Al Hirt, Basia, Box Sets, Compilations, Deep Purple, Eric Clapton, Features, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Incubus, James Booker, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, Reissues, Taylor Dayne, The Alan Parsons Project, The Art of Noise, The Partridge Family, Vinyl

Tagged with Release Round-Up

Review: The Alan Parsons Project, “I Robot: Legacy Edition”

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How to follow an art-rock concept album based on the macabre tales of nineteenth-century author Edgar Allan Poe? For The Alan Parsons Project, the answer was apparently a simple one: look forward rather than back. So the second album by the progressive-rock “group” – in actuality producer-engineer Parsons, chief songwriter-executive producer Eric Woolfson, and a rotating cast of musicians and vocalists – was inspired by the writing of Isaac Asimov and explored artificial intelligence in a sci-fi landscape. I Robot (not to be confused, for legal purposes, with Asimov’s I, Robot, though the author gave the Project’s project his blessing) bested the No. 38 placing of the Poe-based Tales of Mystery and Imagination on the Billboard 200 by hitting No. 9. That was no small feat for an ambitious prog-rock opus in the pop-and-disco-dominated days of 1977. Now, the APP’s Arista debut I Robot has arrived from Legacy Recordings in a 2-CD Legacy Edition with 14 bonus tracks, 9 of which are previously unreleased. This edition supplants a 2007 single-disc remaster as it contains the original five bonus tracks from that reissue.

The future depicted in I Robot via the album’s ten tracks – six vocal songs and four largely instrumental compositions, all credited to Woolfson and Parsons – is a rather dark one, even if the title of one anthemic track proclaims that “Day After Day (The Show Must Go On).” The lyrics are more concerned with mood and feeling rather than advancing a particular story, but are focused on the relationship between man and his robotic creations. Woolfson, who died in 2009, wrote in 2006 as reprinted in the liner notes, “I Robot to some extent looks at the questions and the extent to which as human beings we may or may not be pre-programmed and act in a robotic fashion, as well as the dangers of uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence.” It’s heady stuff, and the album revels in progressive pomp. But it’s all played with impeccable musicianship not to mention earnestness and seriousness. In other words, I Robot wholly avoids the trap of camp despite the frequently operatic writing. Comparisons to Pink Floyd are inevitable, particularly as Parsons famously engineered Dark Side of the Moon, and there’s a certain similarity in the grandiosity of it all not to mention the instrumentation; Parsons admits in his new liner notes here that the title track of I Robot was inspired by the Floyd’s use of the EMS Synthi-A synth sequencer. But I Robot showed The Alan Parsons Project establishing a less lysergic, more cosmic sound of its own, with multiple singers and varied textures placed in both rock-based and orchestral veins.

Read on after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Joe Marchese

October 3, 2013 at 14:05

Posted in News, Reissues, Reviews, The Alan Parsons Project

Tagged with Reviews