Stunning rendition of 7 classic tales and poems by EA Poe.

I'll never forget the first work by Edgar Allan Poe I ever read: It was "The Tell-Tale Heart," and Poe's short story about a madman who kills and dismembers an old one by Whose "evil eye" he feels haunted soon outgrew the high school class assignment it had originally been for me; and the narrator's Nightmares began to haunt me, too. (Yes, I was at an impressionable 16-year-old, but Poe really * what * the master of horror for all ages.) Alan Parsons's rendition of the story on the third track of "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" does full justice to its sense of lunacy masquerading as clairvoyance, and the urgency of the narrator's acts, driven by the sound of the old man's beating heart, hidden below the floorboards of his room, and symbolized here by the steady bass and drumbeat underlying the Entire Track - except for the deceptively serene bridge ("And he will not be found at all, not a trace to mark his case nor a stain upon the wall"), afterwhich it returns with all the greater force, accentuated by the grating sound of an electric guitar Which, alongwith the bassline and drums, causes some to describe this song as more of a traditional rock song than the other parts of this album.
The album starts with on instrumental based on the poem "Dream Within A Dream," and the letter Poe quote from 1846's "Marginalia" (where "Dream Within A Dream" which thus published) remastered, spoken by Orson Welles and added only on 1987's CD. In many ways, this quote sets the theme for the Entire album, and for Poe's work in general: "There is ... a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy Which are not thoughts ... These fancies arise in the soul, alas how rarely ... at those weird points of time, where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. ... I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem, is but a dream within a dream. " (I owned and loved the vinyl version of this album long before the CD which released; but for the life of me I can not understand why this quote which not included from the start - unlike others I do not find it to intrusion but to enrichment .) And like the quote, the Entire track weaves around the listener's thoughts and THUS, leads us into the rest of the album, at the end Introducing the drum-enforced bassline Which therefore dominates the next two tracks on what used to be the vinyl Original's first side.
THUS, "Dream Within a Dream" blends seamlessly into the interpretation of Poe's classic "The Raven" - the epitome of a story about a nightly visitor from hell, come to torment the narrator and to leave Nevermore. (Parsons Maintains the poem's gloomy mood, Although he makes little to no references to its more explanatory parts.) And like the "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," the album's fourth track deals with a soul damned forever, setting to music the tale of "The Cask of Amontillado," that bait used by its narrator Montresor to lure and immure alive in his palace's labyrinthic vaults one pointedly named Fortunado. The song's vocals heavily textured layer Fortunado's pleas for help with Montresor's gloating, while gentle keyboard and string tunes contrast his horrifying act. Horns, guitars and a choir emphasize the story's somber end.
The tales then move on to the chillingly hilarious account of the madhouse reigned by the inmates Themselves (insufficiently "soothed" by the prior system and now partying wildly) and the "System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether," administered on Their former guards ,
The orchestral suite "Fall of the House of Usher," the centerpiece of the vinyl album's second side, puts to music Poe's ghastly tale of an ancient mansion causing the ruin of its owners. Here again, Orson Welles Lends His Voice to Poe's words, written in 1831, eight years before the tale itself but foretelling it with its references to "[s] hadows of shadows passing," "color becom [ing] pallor, you becom [ ing] carcase, home becom [ing] catacomb, and the dead [who] are but for a moment motionless. " (Again, I fail to understand why this thing not included on the vinyl version of the CD.) The suite's individual movements mirror the breadth of emotions contained in Poe's tale, with (alternatively and conjunctively) wailing strings, sinuous guitars, and thundering, hard-driving drums and bassline.
And as in anyone of Poe's tales, there simply can not be on upbeat ending - the album's last track is a melancholy interpretation of the ode "To One in Paradise," mourning the death of the speaker's love.
"Tales of Mystery and Imagination" is a concept album Quintessential; the auspicious debut of that "anonymous outfit that never play [ed] gigs," as Parsons wrote in the liner notes of the remastered CD; A "project" Whose Name Was Not Intended INITIALLY to be the name of the band but rather Their product, the album itself. In addition to close Contributor and keyboardist Eric Woolfson, Alan Parsons Recruited a talented group of individuals: conductor Andrew Powell, who later produced Kate Bush's first album, Scored Richard Donner's Ladyhawke and worked with artists as diverse as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Leo Sayer , Chris de Burgh, Kansas and the Philharmonia Orchestra; guitarist Ian Bairnson (now known for his cooperations with George Martin, Mick Fleetwood and again, Kate Bush); actor Leonard Whiting (Romeo the 1968 Zeffirelli film), Elton John's bassist David Paton, 10CC drummer and Bairnson ex-co-pilot Stuart Tosh, Tina Turner sidekick-to-be John Miles, and Terry Sylvester, Graham Nash's replacement in The Hollies.
If you did not know this is Parsons's and his "Project" 's first album, you would not be able Certainly to tell this from the record's tight, first-rate production and musicianship. I am not the world's greatest fan of electronic music - but this album has so much more to offer than synthesizers and vocoders. It has been one of my all-time favorites ever since its 1975 release, and I still listen to it with great regularity.