TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION - The Alan Parsons Project

YEAR: 1976

LABEL: Mercury

TRACK LISTING: A Dream Within A Dream, The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, (The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, The Fall of the House of Usher, To One In Paradise

IMPRESSIONS: Like Mike Oldfield's OMMADAWN and Frank Zappa's JOE'S GARAGE, I first heard this album because of family friend Ronnie whose eclectic tastes have helped shape my own since I was a kid. The original album I came to know was the "Orson Welles-less" version; it was only later I got the remixed album which included Orson's recitations. Before I even went to kindergarten, my mother taught me to read. And what did she teach me to read on?: TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION by Edgar Allan Poe! So any album featuring song adaptations of Poe tales just had to be a winner with me.
MY FAVOURITE TRACKS: The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, (The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, The Fall of the House of Usher, To One In Paradise

GUEST ARTISTS: Orson Welles (narration), Leonard Whiting (narration, vocals), Arthur Brown (vocals)

FACT SHEET: TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION is The Alan Parsons Project's first album. All the songs are based upon short stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe. "The Raven" was the first rock song to use a digital vocoder. The prelude of the instrumental piece "The Fall of the House of Usher" is based on Claude Debussy's operatic fragment "La chute de la maison Usher" composed between 1908 and 1917. The original version of the 1976 album was remixed in 1987 with added narration by Orson Welles, additional guitar passages and altered production techniques including added 80's-style reverb. According to the album's liner notes, Welles never met Alan Parsons or Eric Woolfson (the nucleus of the Project) but sent them a tape of his performance after the album came out in 1976. Leonard Whiting is a British actor best known for appearing as Romeo opposite Olivia Hussey in the film "ROMEO AND JULIET" as well as playing Victor Frankenstein in "FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY". In July 2010, Classic Rock magazine named the album one of the "50 Albums that Built Prog Rock".