Alan Parsons Project

This box set contains 5 Alan Parsons Project albums (Pyramid, Turn of a Friendly Card, Eve, Stereotomy and Gaudi) as remastered in 2008, including the bonus tracks issued at that time. The Alan Parsons Project were a British progressive rock band, active between 1975 and 1990, consisting of singer Eric Woolfson and keyboardist Alan Parsons surrounded by a varying number of session musicians. Behind the revolving lineup and the regular sidemen, the true core of the Project was the duo of Parsons and Woolfson. Woolfson was a songwriter by profession, but also a composer and pianist. Parsons was a successful producer and accomplished engineer. Almost all songs on the band's albums are credited to "Woolfson/Parsons".

It seems as though the Alan Parsons Project's conceptual grandeur began to lose its potency right around the mid-'80s. With Stereotomy, the message that Parsons is trying to reveal by way of his music begins to dissipate quickly, and the album is saved only somewhat by a couple of interesting instrumental pieces…

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.

Alan Parsons delivered a detailed blueprint for his Project on their 1975 debut, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, but it was on its 1977 follow-up, I Robot, that the outfit reached its true potential. Borrowing not just its title but its concept from Isaac Asimov's classic sci-fi Robot trilogy, this album explores many of the philosophies regarding artificial intelligence – will it overtake man? What does it mean to be man? What responsibilities do mechanical beings have to their creators? And so on and so forth – with enough knotty intelligence to make it a seminal text of late-'70s geeks, and while it is also true that appreciating I Robot does require a love of either sci-fi or art rock, it is also true that sci-fi art rock never came any better than this.

Limited deluxe three CD + Blu-ray + double vinyl LP (pressed at 45RPM) box set of the classic album Ammonia Avenue by The Alan Parsons Project. The set has been newly re-mastered from the original master tapes under the supervision of Alan Parsons and features an additional 53 bonus tracks drawn from Eric Woolfson's songwriting diaries, studio session out-takes and stunning new 5. 1 surround sound and stereo mixes from the original multi-track master tapes by Alan Parsons and the promotional videos of 'Don't Answer Me' and 'Prime Time'…

It seems as though the Alan Parsons Project's conceptual grandeur began to lose its potency right around the mid-'80s. With Stereotomy, the message that Parsons is trying to reveal by way of his music begins to dissipate quickly, and the album is saved only somewhat by a couple of interesting instrumental pieces…