Customer Reviews

Stereotomy

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was their strongest album in a while, both musically and lyrically. Was Eric Woolfson having a nervous breakdown? The theme here is clearly one of losing touch with reality, bitterness at the real world, and drinking too much ("it helps me to forget the past and ease the pain").

This was the next-to-last album with Woolfson as lyricist and vocalist, and I can't help but think it was his siren call for help at not dealing with the fact that the Project was not as successful as it used to be and as maybe Alan was telling Eric it would be.

The album opens with the song Stereotomy, a vague title that seems to mean different things to different people. From what I can tell, it has to do with splitting the two hemispheres of the brain--maybe an allusion to the splitting of Eric and Alan philosophically? The song has a lot to do with fear and paranoia ("Silent knives dissect me and I feel no pain...do anything you want with me...it's always the same"). Beaujolais is very catchy, but check out those depressing lyrics ("One race I can't win with an alter ego...wherever I go he go...Beaujolais will be my ruin"). Urbania is one of Alan's most creative instrumentals, with a jazzy flair unlike any other recording of his. Limelight sounds like Eric giving up on ever being in the limelight ("I can hear the roar of a distant crowd, they are calling my name...limelight you were all I ever wanted since it all began"). In The Real World is very much about not being in the real world ("Don't want to live my life in the real world"). Where's The Walrus? is also one of the Project's more creative instrumentals; very dark guitar & synth-oriented. Light Of The World describes a descent into powerful depression "I am lost in so many ways I can walk no more...No matter how much I try the tide will not turn for me...I can take no more". Chinese Whispers is a short but interesting transition to the next song. Stereotomy 2 closes with a reprise of the opening.

Don't get me wrong--this isn't boring. Depression and conflict are powerful emotions, and this album has a lot more emotion and oomph than most of the Project's boring 1980's albums. This is eccentric but a real keeper.

Although a fine album, the Alan Parsons Project's 1984 release, "Vulture Culture," with it's pop-oriented sound, had many Project fans worried that the veteran studio group had gotten too soft in their musical approach. So, Project leaders Alan Parsons & Eric Woolfson decided that the follow-up disc, 1985's "Stereotomy," would be a tougher-sounding Project album, for which many fans breathed a sigh of relief. This is a powerful, punchy, mostly hard-rocking Project album, and one of their best. The title track is an awesome, classic Project rocker, which segues quite well into the fun, upbeat "Beaujolais." Next up is the terrific, ambient-rock instrumental, "Urbania," and then, the Project turn the volume down a bit for one of their all-time greatest ballads, "Limelight," beautifully sung by the one-and-only Gary Brooker of Procol Harum. "In The Real World" is a cool pop-rocker, and the pumped-up instrumental "Where's The Walrus?" is absolutely electric. "Light Of The World" is a gorgeous song, a true Project buried treasure. Finally, there's the brief, atmospheric "Chinese Whispers," and the grand finale, "Stereotomy Two," with the group charging for home with guns blazing. The album is outstanding from beginning to end, with first-rate songs & instrumentals, incredible, energetic musicianship & production, and great lead vocals by John Miles, Chris Rainbow, Gary Brooker and Graham Dye. Quite simply, "Stereotomy" rocks. The Alan Parsons Project's album sales may have been in decline by this point, but "Stereotomy" certainly remains one of the group's very best releases. Pick it up and crank it up!

As a strong Alan Parsons Project fan, I am sometimes frustrated by the couple throw away songs on every album, as well as the strict adherence to "formula" songwriting.

For one glorious album, they seem to have thrown the shackles off and let themselves go, and it shows! This may sound a little obscure at first listen compared to their other stuff, but if you keep coming back it has more depth than their other efforts. The irony is that it doesn't really have a central theme, yet it almost works best as an album moreso than any of the others, which often had great singles. There is a great flow and spontaneity to the whole thing that I still love having first purchased the cassette when it initially came out, and now having the CD.

Hidden here (and a travesty that it was left off 'The Definitive Collection', an otherwise top notch collection) is 'Where's the Walrus?', my favorite Project song and the rare instrumental that energizes, mesmerizes, and is just plain fun all at the same time. There is just more umph to this collection (the title track is their first out and out rock song since 'Games People Play') that makes it a hidden gem...

Easily one of my favorite Alan Parsons Project albums, Stereotomy has a zero clunker content --something that isn't true of most of the APP albums following I, Robot. The album is the first by APP to make use of several new technologies including Yamaha's FM synthesizers (synthesizer buffs will agree that this album has some of the most tasteful FM work in existence) and the new generation of digital reverbs. As a result it has a cleaner, sharper sound than its predecessors. It also has a more electronic and synthesizer-oriented character than any other APP album. I gather that the record label pretty much abandoned Parson and Woolfson on the marketing for this slightly out of the mainstream effort. It lapsed into instant obscurity as a result, but hopefully the passage of time has revealed it to more listeners. "Beaujolais" is my favorite but, as I said, all of the tunes are decent or better.

Strangely enough, my online dictionary defines Stereotomy as: "The science or art of cutting solids into certain figures or sections, as arches, and the like; especially, the art of stonecutting." Is this how the album describes the splitting of Parsons/Woolfson? It certainly is the most personal album of the entire Project, and one of my favorites.
As for the cover - if you turn the picture upside down, you can see it's not part of any ink-blot test - it's the negative of a gorilla's head and shoulders. The inner beast of the artist, perhaps?

From Stereotomy One to Stereotomy Two the album is a great mix of fabulous keyboard work, guitar solos and solid voices. John Miles appears once again on this album and his vocals were the perfect choice for Stereotomy and In the Real World. Elmer Gantry was fabulous in Limelight! For those APP fans who may not know, an interesting piece of APP trivia has Canadian figure skaing icon Elvis Stojko skating to Limelight.... a great tribute to the songwriting of Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons. Graham Dye makes his debut with the APP in a very solid performance on Light of the World which is a great song about a depressed person who is looking for happiness.

A fabulous album and one I would highly recommend to those who need a great introduction to the APP.

Stereotomy is The Alan Parsons Project's (APP) 9th album. It was released near the end of 1985, not all that long after a calmer, more characteristic concept album - Vulture Culture.

Anyway, if you are an APP listener, you know that their music swings from etherial instrumentals and mellow ballads to driving techno-rock. This album presents more of the latter.

The tracks "Stereotomy", "Stereotomy Two", "Beaujolais", and "In the Real World" all have a clipped, strong techno-rock sound, though sometimes cacophonous, and therefore, not among my personal favorites.

"Urbania", on the other hand, is an outstanding progressive rock instrumental, and well worth a listen. The other instrumentals, "Where's the Walrus" and "Chinese Whisper" seem uninspired. In fact, in my opinion, "Chinese Whisper" (at only 1 min long) is little more than a preamble to "Stereotomy Two."

I don't quite know what to make of "Light of the World". The song is a passable, though certainly not a memorable mellow offering.

On the other hand, I find "Limelight" to be HIGHLIGHT OF THE ENTIRE ALBUM! It is one of the few songs on this disc that reminds me of what I like best about APP.

I know that different people have different opinions and tastes when it comes to anything, but I don't see how this album rates more than about 3 stars. The two best tracks in my opinion - "Limelight" and "Urbania" don't salvage the rest of the album.

If you have not listened to APP before, I recommend giving this album a miss, for the time being, and start out with "Tales of Mystery and Imagination", "I Robot", "Turn of a Friendly Card" or even "Vulture Culture" for a taste of APP's best.

This album, except for a couple of songs, seldom finds its way to my playlists.

From a 30+ year APP listener.

Luis Mejia (son) - Stereotomy, released in 1985, marked a further and better inclinnation into echoing rock with a brand new synthesized style, combined with the best natured modern arrengements. Released after the pop-like, mellow Vulture Culture, Stereotomy kept a strong synth rock based structure, although it was the album which breaked their "trillogy of best sold albums" mainly because of the more difficult sound and because of Woolfson small vocal contribution, as Woolfson voice was very commercial.

Stereotomy is mainly a futuristic, synth rock album, being mainly structured with modern synthesized mellodies and a rock basis, its styles differ from synth rock, prog and power ballads. Its thoughtful, personal and critisizing lyrics assume one of their most strong and questioned compositions, just as another reviewer mentioned, if you listen carefuly to the album and compare it with the band's later destine, it really sounds like deja-vu writings, almost with a subliminal message of the band's fate. Stereotomy possesses catchy, electronic, powerful, aggressive, urban, modern and futuristic moods. Even though it stays as a much more aggressive album, its awkward use of modern keyboards, the much lesser impact of the album, the poor sales, its lack of evocative material and its uninspired cohersion makes Stereotomy the worst of TAPP albums, but still is a nice work.

Some of the songs make it a memorable album, still the cohersion in the whole album stays awkward, but still there is a group of songs that keep Stereotomy a fine work: the title track Stereotomy gives to the album a great potential and hope, its echoing performance, plus its imaginative and serious lyrics are fantastic; although the song is sang by John Miles, it possesses Eric Woolfson only vocal feature. Then comes the famous, beautiful, sentimental and recognizable power ballad Limelight, sang by Procol Harum's Gary Brooker, it has a sincere touch of the dream and comfort of every artist in rising fame, its the second best song in the album, while the electric, futuristic and catchy instrumental Where's The Walrus? is a valueable and memorable song. Then comes Light Of The World, while not having a powerful style or too much of fantastic mellodies, its the only song where Parsons bring back his classic style, being an emotionally powerful and light, uncompromising, unexagerated arrengements and mellodies, it remains as a mixture between I Robot's Breakdown and The Turn Of A Friendly Card's Nothing Left To Loose, certainly being the most recommendable song in the album. The other tracks are also good but not as impressive as the others, like the light, funny and catchy Beaujolais, the interpretations of both the smooth and stressful side of the city in Urbania, the rocker In The Real World, the slight ambient effort of Chinese Whispers, which connects with the fierce but unnecessary Stereotomy Two. Track Pick: Stereotomy, Limelight, Where's The Walrus?, Light Of The World.

The artists performance is also great but Alan Parsons' keyboard usage at one point gets stressful, while Eric Woolfson only sang one fragment of a song, and this kind of dissapoints me because he is one of my favourite vocalists. Andrew Powell's orchestral arrengement is the most poor of all of his arrengements, I only noticed a slight string performance at some point of Where's The Walrus?. The vocalists in the album include Chris Rainbow, Gary Brooker, John Miles and Graham Dye.

In conclussion I regard Stereotomy as their worst album, although its still well crafted and with a serious/somber composition, it finds its way to appreciation though, just like they say, as music isn't written in words, sometimes the message can't be correctly comprehended.

Much has already been said about this album. More trivia first: When this

album first came out it was issued with a 3-d plastic case so the bull's

head on the cover looked 3-d. Anyways, this is probably the most

different sounding CD the band ever did. It's more guitar driven than

any of their previous albums and more so than the ones following. And

yet, the keyboards and synths here were also more riff driven and less

background than at any other time. Usually the keyboards and really every

other instrument have been solely in the background never overshadowing

the vocals, except for at the bridges, openings, and instrumentals. Not

here. The instrumental parts share at least equally with the vocals at

all times. Not an abundance of string pad sounds and piano. No orchestra.

This was definitely a product of its era. I don't understand why they

don't get these cd's remastered, i've been waiting for years and am

starting to lose interest in this old music. Hurry up arista!

Well it's now been over a year since all the remasters came out, I write this

part in 2011. The remaster of this is outstanding in 24 bit high definition

sound and includes a bunch of bonus tracks including demos. Get it!

This CD explores the concept of struggling through life, and provides several good juggling songs as well. The two Stereotomys, Beaujolais, and In the Real World are all good juggling songs. Light of the World and Limelight are very good ballads. The only weak points of the album are the instrumentals. Where's the Walrus and Urbania are both good, but could be much better. Chinese Whispers I am not sure about, as the moment it sounds like it is about to start, it turns into Stereotomy Two.

This album is made even better by the fact that it marks the end of an Era for Parsons. After this album, all of Parsons' work (excluding Gaudi, which I don't have) is full of interesting concepts that are just missed by the lyrics, or even, in some cases (Call Up on Time Machine), downright butchered by the lyrics.

Stereotomy is a great album, has lyrics that hit the concepts on the head, and is very much worth owning.

Oh yeah, a great juggling album as well.