Alan Parsons Project Avenue

The 12 tracks that appear on The Best of the Alan Parsons Project include some of their greatest singles, like "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You" from 1977's I Robot and the inducing "Games People Play" off of The Turn of a Friendly Card. Even though these songs are splendid all by themselves, they seem to lose their conceptual weight when taken away from their original albums. As singles, they do act as a fine representation of how The Alan Parsons Project's music sounds and conveys its mysterious air, but even with a dozen singles on this album there's just too much of their other worthy material that is sadly left off. Present is their biggest single and most alluring piece, "Eye in the Sky," from the album of the same name, and the entrancing "Time" from Turn of a Friendly Card.

Engineer/producer Alan Parsons and his colleague, songwriter and lyricist Eric Woolfson, formed the Alan Parsons Project in 1975. Throughout their career, the Alan Parsons Project recorded concept albums (including adaptations of Poe and Asimov books) with a revolving cast of session musicians. Released in 1982, Eye in the Sky was their greatest success; the title track charted in the Top Ten on the pop charts and the album went platinum. Although they weren't able to repeat that success, the group maintained a devoted cult audience, even after they stopped recording following 1987's Gaudi.

The 12 tracks that appear on The Best of the Alan Parsons Project include some of their greatest singles, like "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You" from 1977's I Robot and the inducing "Games People Play" off of The Turn of a Friendly Card. Even though these songs are splendid all by themselves, they seem to lose their conceptual weight when taken away from their original albums. As singles, they do act as a fine representation of how The Alan Parsons Project's music sounds and conveys its mysterious air, but even with a dozen singles on this album there's just too much of their other worthy material that is sadly left off.

Along with The Definitive Collection, The Essential Alan Parsons Project gives the casual fan the proper mixture and proportion of radio hits, Alan Parsons' signature instrumentals, and Eric Woolfsons' thought-provoking ballads. Best of all, SONY/BMG has included the once lost gemstone No Answers Only Questions (Final Version) that Eric Woolfson composed and guitarist Ian Bairnson arranged. Everything has been digitally remastered from the best available source tapes…

The Alan Parsons Project were a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. They were accompanied by a varying number of session musicians and some relatively consistent session players such as guitarist Ian Bairnson, arranger Andrew Powell, bassist and vocalist David Paton, drummer Stuart Elliott, and vocalists Lenny Zakatek and Chris Rainbow…