Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Alan Parsons Project

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Original Release Date: 1975
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Island / Mercury
• ASIN: B000001FN3
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (93 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,388 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording
As unlikely as the idea seems today to use the suspense-filled stories of Edgar Allan Poe as the basis for an album of rock tunes, listeners in the 1970s--who were barraged with such high-flown concepts during the heyday of prog-rock--turned the record into a major hit. The Project actually scored a Top 40 hit with "(The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather." Thanks to FM radio overplay, however, "The Raven" is probably the album's best-known track today. The 1987 CD version of "ToMaI" differs somewhat from the original vinyl. Parsons dropped in synthesizer parts to modernize the album, and added an opening recitation by Orson Welles. But the integrity of the original is maintained well enough, and the album remains a classic excuse to dim the lights, pour a glass of sherry (amontillado, natch), and break out the headphones. --Daniel Durchholz

Product Description
Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. 2007. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore.", March 16, 2004

By	Schtinky "Schtinky" (California) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Forget about the pop songs that Alan Parsons made later in the 80's, this is a completely different approach to music. I'm not even a diehard Alan Parsons fan but this is truly a masterpiece of effort and inventiveness.

Parsons decided to take the works of Edgar Allen Poe and put them to music, and I don't think it could have been done better. Poe has always been one of my favorite writers, allowing me to sift through a human mind on its decline through the many layers of madness. Heavy use of synthesizers creates a fantasy world full of the moods and emotions Poe used in his writing.

Dream Within A Dream is an instrumental, nearly classical piece, with an introductory reading by Orson Wells, a slow heavy beat of drums and bass joined by keyboards reminiscent of a harpsichord and choir type vocal accompaniment. The synthesized riffs are vaguely similar to the Priest's theme from The Exorcist, an apt association of dread for this moody piece.

Dream Within A Dream blends smoothly into The Raven, probably the most popular piece on this album. It is masterpiece of Poe's famous poem set to music, with the vocals eerily sang using a vocoder, and the choir accompaniment in the background. The synthesizer brings out more horn sounds, and the music, while still eerie, has a more triumphant and powerful sound to it than Dream.

The Tell Tale Heart starts out with a scream of derangement, and brings the album into its rock genre with a faster, pounding beat and more guitar than keyboard. The vocals are purposefully stressed into a pitch that expertly portrays the lunacy of the murderer's descent into madness as the old man's beating heart refuses to stop its tormenting clamor, and incorporates some of the actual lines from Poe's unforgettable tale of unleashed insanity. The bass line in this song does indeed sound like a rapidly pulsing heart, louder and louder as sanity is cast aside.

The Cask of Amontillado slows the pace back down, in a gentle melody reminiscent of The Beatles "She's Leaving Home", with similar tune and pitch, but more powerful in its chorale moments. I really felt that Parsons did a tremendous job on this tune not only with the music but with the lyrics, telling (as close as three verses possibly can) the summation of this tale of murder. Of particular note are the echoes of the voice of Fortunato behind Montresor's in the chorus, overlapping each other as the exchange of words between the two within that dank cellar would have, yet eerily gentle rather than desperately pleading.

"What are these chains that are binding my arm?" (Fortunato)
"Part of you dies each passing day." (Montresor)
"Say it's a game and I'll come to no harm." (Fortunato)
"You'll feel your life slipping away." (Montresor)
"Spare me my life only name your reward." (Fortunato)
"Part of you dies each brick I lay." (Montresor)
"Bring back some light in the name of the Lord." (Fortunato)
"You'll feel your mind slipping away." (Montresor)

With classical strings sawing off notes as a ticking clock would pass the seconds of agonizing time, powerful horn sounds, and the gentle, deadly lyrics, I think this song is really one of the masterpieces of the album though it never got the recognition some of the other songs did.

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether is the obvious choice on the album for radio play, a tiny bit obvious that it was intended to be the breakout song for the album, though I believe The Raven actually became more popular. An excellent choice for the theme, the very nature of the story itself brings the beat of the music back up into the more rock orientated aspects of rhythmic drums and lots of guitar riffs, and deep voices chanting "Just what you need to make you feel better" in the background. While it doesn't delve into the actual story behind the music as much as some of the other pieces, the music does portray a certain maniacal glee within it, and manages to fit in quite nicely with the eerier and more lyrically elaborate compositions; and adds some fun by bringing in the sounds of applause and overlaying riffs from both The Raven and Dream Within A Dream at the end of the song.

The Fall of the House of Usher is the major masterpiece of this musical representation of Poe, just as the book is one of the more famous examples of his literary genius. Usher is comprised of five separate movements; and is a beautiful, classical composition of mood and mystery, death and decay, body and spirit, insufferable gloom, and the storms that raze the walls of body and mansion.
The first movement, a seven minute piece called Prelude starts with another oration by Orson Wells, and is soft and almost flirtatious in places, forceful and climaxing in others, incorporating a feeling of anticipation or longing within the notes; and ending aptly with the sounds of a powerful thunderstorm and driving rain.

The second movement is a two and a half minute piece called Arrival, and picks up with the sounds of the storm, and speeds into a climax of synthesizer and drums, falling softly off into a languid beat and morose guitars before the synthesizer builds back up to its peak once again.

The third movement is called Intermezzo, and is only one minute in length, not much more than eerie sounds of a cathedral type organ, that plays its self out into the fourth movement called Pavane.

In Pavane we hear more bell-like synthesizer and guitar, again reminiscent of the Priest's song in Exorcist, but underlain with a throatier, progressive foundation from synthesizer and bass, until about three minutes into the melody it picks up with the addition of drums and a building crescendo of escalating volume and tension. I believe this is the movement that Parson's actually used a glockenspiel in, though with his ability to make synthesizers sound like whatever he wanted them to, its hard for me to tell if it's the real thing or not.

The last movement of The Fall of the House of Usher is a mercifully short (51 second) instrumental scream of anguish, building kettle drums and an escalating noise from the synthesizer along with what sounds like feedback shrieks. The does, however, symbolize the ending of Poe's work; where, "There was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher."

The last song on the album is a great disappointment to me. To One In Paradise is a real poem by Edgar Allen Poe, a stunningly beautiful poem of anguish and lost love. Instead of incorporating Poe's work into the actual structure of this melody as he did with The Raven and The Tell Tale Heart, he used sappy and uninspiring lyrics about "believing in your dreams". Pah! The music is very "Pop" orientated and softly saccharin, and only at the very end of the tune did Parsons add an oration from the real poem; "And all my days are trances, and all my nightly dreams, are where thy gray eye glances, and where thy footstep gleams, in what ethereal dances, by what eternal streams.", but the narrator can barely be heard above the syrupy sighs of the chorus and the gentle riffs of the music. I just don't believe that a touchy-feelie, good-mood, gentle and happy song like this belongs to any of Poe's work whatsoever. The mood should have been as dark and anguished as the poem itself.

There you have it. Altogether one of the most original musical works of art to this day, it manages to cross the time barrier of evolving rock and electronica, and still hold its own in the top ranks with its eclectic creativity. Pick up a copy, get some headphones, and enjoy yourself.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning rendition of 7 classic tales and poems by E.A. Poe., January 4, 2003

By	Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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 man 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 an impressionable 16-year-old, but Poe really *was* 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 floor boards of his room, and symbolized here by the steady bass and drum beat underlying the entire track - except for the deceptively serene bridge ("And he won't be found at all, not a trace to mark his fall nor a stain upon the wall"), after which it returns with all the greater force, accentuated by the grating sound of an electric guitar which, along with 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 an instrumental based on the poem "Dream Within a Dream," and the brief Poe quote from 1846's "Marginalia" (where "Dream Within a Dream" was also published), spoken by Orson Welles and added only on 1987's remastered 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 was released; but for the life of me I cannot understand why this quote was not included from the start - unlike others I don't find it an intrusion but an 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 also 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 heavily textured vocals 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," "colour becom[ing] pallor, man becom[ing] carcase, home becom[ing] catacomb, and the dead [who] are but for a moment motionless." (Again, I fail to understand why this was 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 cannot be an 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 quintessential concept album; 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 initially not intended 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 albums, 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 didn't know this is Parsons's and his "Project"'s first album, you certainly wouldn't be able 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.

Also recommended:
Essential Alan Parsons Project
Edgar Allan Poe : Poetry and Tales (Library of America)

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The first and most adventurous, May 25, 2000

By	joe_n_bloe (Ester AK USA) - See all my reviews

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is the first "project" by Alan Parsons, the most adventurous, one of the best, and at the time intended to be the only. With a strong Edgar Allan Poe concept (taking even its title from Poe), Tales leads you through a first "side" of loosely connected songs and a second of longer form quasi-orchestral material. The album as a whole is strong and bears up well under repeated listening. It isn't as cohesive as later APP efforts but that isn't necessarily a fault.

As an owner of the original album, I was happy to see it remastered and re-released on CD (many years ago) but I didn't think that the remixing and inserted material were an improvement. The Orson Welles narrative was fine but the other changes weren't particularly to my liking, and they still aren't. Nevertheless, this album remains a progressive rock landmark, and its boldness and enduring success merit a top rating.

My favorite has always been the spooky, ethereal "The Raven," which captures perfectly the metaphysical foreboding of one of Poe's best-known poems.