Alan Parsons Project in the 70’s
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives. All rights reserved.
The debut album of the Alan Parsons Project remains a source of fascination more than 40 years after its release: the bombastic rock opera immerses itself with all sorts of studio gimmicks in a thoroughly magical way in the prose and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, tirelessly circling a treacherous heart and lust at the uncanny.
Of course, Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons reflected the b-movie adaptations of Poe’s stories with their astonishingly versatile conceptual kitsch rather than trying to probe the language artist’s love of storytelling. The “The Fall Of The House Of Usher” suite can even compete with the film adaptation of Jean Epstein’s material, at least acoustically.
“40th Anniversary Edition”
A deluxe edition of the work was released ten years ago, containing both the 1976 album version and the 1987 plastic surgery version. A radio spot by Orson Welles and a few unpublished experiments were also handed out.
The “40th Anniversary Edition” also contains a 5.1 surround mix meticulously remixed by Alan Parsons in 2016, other previously unknown, lavish jams (“The Raven!”), a magnificent hardcover book and interviews.