Parsons Gaudi

This album has many rhythmic & atmospheric modern keyboards, a bit like on the "Stereotomy" album. The vocals are still very good, and the songs are more pop than progressive; the tracks are although well made and catchy enough. Not bad at all, this album has quite good keyboards textures and electric guitar solos…

This album has many rhythmic & atmospheric modern keyboards, a bit like on the "Stereotomy" album. The vocals are still very good, and the songs are more pop than progressive; the tracks are although well made and catchy enough…

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".

Freudiana was to be the 11th album by The Alan Parsons Project, but during its development, Eric Woolfson decided to turn the album into a rock opera. It was released as simply "Freudiana," and is known as the "unofficial" Alan Parsons Project album. Alan Parsons continued as a solo artist with the 1993 album Try Anything Once, which was musically in a direction more or less continued from that of 1987's Gaudi. Eric Woolfson hit upon the idea of researching the life and works of Sigmund Freud with a view to their musical potential after he finished the tenth Alan Parsons Project album Gaudi. He retraced Freud's footsteps and explored his realms through his homes in London and Vienna (both now museums) as well as literary sources including Freud's classic cases whose real identities he concealed by use of names such as Wolfman, Ratman, Dora, Little Hans, and Schreber, the Judge. In addition, Freud's writings on his discovery of the 'unconscious', his well known theories such as the 'Oedipus Complex', the 'Ego' and the 'Id' and perhaps his best known masterpiece, 'The Interpretation of Dreams' all served as springboards for musical ideas.

Alan Parsons studied a number of musical instruments in childhood but, like many of his peers, settled on the guitar in his early teens. His job in the late 1960s at the EMI tape duplication facility allowed him access to many classics of the day, including the tape master of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), which fired him up to become a recording engineer. He subsequently managed to get work at the Abbey Road Studios and participated in the creation of The Beatles albums Let It Be (1970) and Abbey Road (1969) and the infamous Apple rooftop session. He also went on to work as mix engineer with Paul McCartney and George Harrison after The Beatles split…

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…