Halloween has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain.The festival is a celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year". Traditionally, the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. The ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, now known as Halloween, the boundary between the alive and the deceased dissolved, and the dead become dangerous for the living by causing problems such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would frequently involve bonfires, into which bones of slaughtered livestock were thrown. Costumes and masks were also worn at the festivals in an attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them.
Now then, i'm not really into halloween but i had this album on standby for sometime and thought by myself...Edgar Allen Poe the man who wrote gothic horror stories and ended miserably like a true great writer he was. Those were the days..anyway it inspired Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfsun to put his writing to music and even though concept albums had been declared out at the time, managed to convince enough people-like me to buy the album and make it a goldrecord...11 years later after the Alan Parsons prokject had been closed , he got to partially rerecord/remix the album, including a voluntairy contribution by Orson Welles, all for the CD release...both are here now, last year a remasterd double pack of both versions was released. I've added a reading of The Raven by actor Christopher Walken to both versions.
In October 1967, at age 18, Parsons went to work as an assistant engineer at Abbey Road Studios, and first garnered significant industry exposure via his work on the Beatles' 1969 masterpiece, Abbey Road. Parsons subsequently worked with Paul McCartney on several of Wings' earliest albums; he also oversaw recordings from Al Stewart, Cockney Rebel, and Pilot, but solidified his reputation by working on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. He was known for going beyond what would normally be considered the scope of a recording engineer’s duties. He considered himself to be a recording director.
He founded The Alan Parsons Project with producer and songwriter (and occasional singer) Eric Woolfson in 1975. The Project consisted of a revolving group of studio musicians and vocalists, most notably the members of Pilot and (on the first album) the members of American rock band Ambrosia. Unlike most rock groups, the Project rarely performed live, although they did release a number of music videos. After releasing ten albums, the Project dissolved after 1987, and Parsons continues to release work in his own name and in collaboration with other musicians; Parsons and his band now regularly tour many parts of the world.
The Project debuted in 1975 with Tales of Mystery and Imagination, a collection inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe; similarly, the science fiction of Isaac Asimov served as the raw material for 1977's follow-up, I Robot. With 1980's The Turn of a Friendly Card, a meditation on gambling, the Alan Parsons Project scored a Top 20 hit, "Games People Play"; 1982's Eye in the Sky was the Project's most successful effort, and notched a Top Three hit with its title track. While 1984's Ammonia Avenue went gold, the Project's subsequent LPs earned little notice, although records like 1985's Vulture Culture, 1987's Gaudi, and 1996's On Air found favor with longtime fans. Time Machine followed in 1999. After taking a five-year hiatus, Parsons returned in 2004 with A Valid Path.
As well as receiving gold and platinum awards from nearly every country in the world, Parsons has received eleven Grammy Award nominations for engineering and production. In 2007 he received a nomination for Best Surround Sound Album for A Valid Path. As of 2007, he tours under a revised name, The Alan Parsons Live Project, presenting world-spanning concerts performing material from his most recent album as well as selections from the original Project.
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Parsons, Alan - Tales Of Mystery And Imagination V (76 ^ 98mb)
The album is an insight into the life of American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), as seen through the eyes of Parsons and Eric Woolfson, an admirer of Poe's work and at whose instigation the Project (as it was titled during its embryonic stages) was undertaken. The lyric content of the album incorporates many adaptations of Poe's work.
The album's avant-garde soundscapes kept it from being a blockbuster, but the interesting lyrical and musical themes — retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe — attracted a small audience. Critical reaction was often mixed.
This album was released in U.K. originally with a different name. Simply called "The Alan Parsons Project" it was successful enough to achieve gold status but later that year the same album was released under the name of "Tales of Mystery and Imagination"
01 - A Dream Within A Dream (3:43)
02 - The Raven (Voc.Leonard Whiting) (3:58)
03 - The Tell-Tale Heart (Voc.Arthur Brown) (4:42)
04 - The Cask Of Amontillado (Voc.John Miles) (4:29)
05 - The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether (Voc.John Miles) (4:12)
The Fall Of The House Of Usher ( 06 -10) (15:13)
06 - Prelude (5:51)
07 - Arrival (2:36)
08 - Intermezzo(1:06)
09 - Pavane (4:44)
10 - Fall (1:07)
11 - The One In Paradise (Voc.Terry Sylvester)(4:21)
Xs
Christopher Walken reads Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven (8:29)
Parsons, Alan - Tales Of Mystery And Imagination (87 ^ 99mb)
In 1987, Parsons completely remixed the album, including additional guitar passages and narration (by Orson Welles) as well as updating the production style to include heavy reverb and the gated drum sound of the 80s. The CD notes that Welles never met Parsons or Collaborator Eric Woolfson, but sent a tape to them of the performance shortly after the orignal album was released in 1976. The original multitrack masters were transferred from a Soundcraft "Saturn" analog machine to a Sony 3324 DASH format 24 track recorder. May and June 1987
01 - A Dream Within A Dream (Instrumental) (4:13)
02 - The Raven (Voc.Leonard Whiting) (3:57)
03 - The Tell-Tale Heart (Voc.Arthur Brown) (4:38)
04 - The Cask Of Amontillado (Voc.John Miles) (4:33)
05 - The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether (Voc.John Miles)(4:20)
The Fall Of The House Of Usher (Instrumental)
06 - I Prelude (Narrator - Orson Welles) (7:02)
07 - II - Arrival (2:39)
08 - III - Intermezzo (1:00)
09 - IV - Pavane (4:36)
10 - V - Fall (0:51)
11 - The One In Paradise (Voc.Terry Sylvester) (4:46)
Xs
Christopher Walken reads Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven (8:29)
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