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The Alan Parsons Project – Pyramid

Posted by Beamer

pyramid.jpg

Where do I even begin? Alan Parsons is beyond epic. He never leaves my turntable, car, or iTunes playlists. Always on repeat.

At 18, Alan had his hands on the Abbey Road tapes while working at Abbey Road Studios, and shortly thereafter engineered The Dark Side of the Moon. This guy was a machine.

Pyramid is my favorite release of the group, though AllMusic calls it “average,” and claims that isn’t a necessity. Shame on them.

Which one is your favorite release?

The Alan Parsons Project – What Goes Up

[audio:the_alan_parsons_project-what_goes_up.mp3]

The Alan Parsons Project – Hyper-Gamma Spaces

[audio:the_alan_parsons_project-hyper_gamma_spaces.mp3]

A semi-related treat:

19 Comments Leave A Comment

2

Beamer says:

January 13, 2009 at 6:52 pm

Such a great track. I’ve actually had this post queued up for a little while – and his post spurred me to fire this one out (reason for its brevity).

Recently “Eve” has been climbing my charts as well.

Glad there’s some APP fans in here :)

3

frank says:

January 13, 2009 at 11:45 pm

That looks like a Hipgnosis cover. I wonder if Peter Christopherson did it? If so, that would probably be the only good thing I could say about the Alan Parsons project. :P Cool cover anyway.

6

Ajit says:

January 14, 2009 at 8:42 am

ha, i hadn’t heard the Don’t Answer Me track before. but needless to say it’s another track i’m addicted to. i’m not sure what it is about APP. i feel if it was a similar track by another artist, i would think it was lame. but there’s something about their style that makes it appealing.

7

Dave says:

January 14, 2009 at 9:13 am

The iRobot album is way up there, as is Ammonia Avenue (of which the title track is simply amazing) and Eye in the Sky. There are songs on all of APP’s albums I enjoy, though I have to admit I haven’t heard much of his newest stuff from the past ten years or so. Also, I have yet to hear Eve… I need to pick that one up.

8

Beamer says:

January 14, 2009 at 9:20 am

@Dave – *Definitely* pick up Eve. It took a few listens to fully sink in. It’s really good.

13

Nikos says:

January 15, 2009 at 12:13 am

I never thought that I could come across a post about Alan Parsons Project.
I’m a big fan!
The best album is, without doubt, their first “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” with the epic instrumental “The Fall of the House of Usher”, you must hear it on vinyl. It also includes the radio hit “Raven” that is still today a very fresh song.

15

Beamer says:

January 15, 2009 at 10:05 am

@Nikos – Yeah it’s a fantastic album. My favorite is “The Cask Of Amontillado” from it – I totally melt. Tales is my favorite when I have to get up at like 4AM. Kinda eerie.

17

nikto says:

January 17, 2009 at 4:31 am

This album is one of the favorites of my father and mine too. I remember listening these 9 tunes when I was a kid, on sunday morning… Great, great work… hyper gamma spaces… still gets me goose bumps…

18

RickK says:

August 9, 2009 at 7:16 am

Pyramid is my fav of Parson’s as well. The remastered version sounds excellent. This would have made some great movie music. I just don’t care for the some of the generic singers he had and the over-blown, bloated production.

Pyramid has some great melody’s and instrumentation. Listen to 10CC’s “Original Soundtrack”, this reminds me of Pyramid in terms of the production. The only issue I have had is Allan Parson’s marketing and image. He seems like he thinks he is the only important engineer. His Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs Sound test cd has some great stuff on it and is great to have if you own a high end system. However, this guy placates to the audiophile and seems to be more about sound than music sometimes.

He was “one” of the engineers that worked on Dark Side. The truth is, Rogers Waters called the shots on that recording all the way. No engineering decisions were made that didn’t go through Waters. Also, his work on Abbey Road was more as an assistant to Geoff Emerick and George Martin. So, I don’t like his bloated pretensious name Allan Parson’
s Project. I think his ego and Beatles Floyd hangon is obvious and let’s face it, most sound engineers don’t also happen to be writers, producers, that record albums themselves.

So, time has shown that the project failed miserably over the years. Few look back and would pick any AP album as a desert classic. His creative output is just not that memorable cause his albums and band had no identity. We know he didn’t play all the instruments or sing so whose the band? Why did he never tell us? Ego.. this has cost him $$ over the years.

Even Mike Myers took a stab at the name Allan Parson’s Project cause it sounded so pretensious he couldn’t resist makeing fun of the name in one of the Austin Powers movies. Also, most of his music is middle age mainstream crap in my opinion. However, Pyramid is a standout although relatively un-important to most of the classic pop rock music which is what that reveiwer mentioned. You can’t take this guys music seriously really.

19

Alex Nielsen says:

September 25, 2009 at 1:39 pm

Well, it seems like there are many diff. opinions about APP.
From my point of view, APP differs completely from so much other music,
simply by its complexity and extremely well done productions. As one once said when asked about what genre of music APP is “in a 100 years it will be classified as classical along with the well know classic composers from 16-1800”. I totaly agree.
Having said that, I agree that the latest 10 years produktions from AP is a total waste of time – they dont even come close to the quality that APP delivered. Woolfson & Parsons is to music what Lennon and MCcartney was – inseperately when it comes to create music.
I think that much of peoples intolerence to APP comes from the fact, that
today people gets earraped by so much lousy music, that they are not able to differ shit from good music :-|

That was just some thoughts from Denmark