This reissue includes a prologue featuring Orson Welles that was not used on the original release, as well as newly recorded drums, guitar and synthesizer parts.
Personnel: Alan Parsons (vocals, keyboards); John Miles, Leonard Whiting, Arthur Brown (vocals); Orson Welles (spoken vocals); David Paton (guitar, bass, background vocals); Laurence Juber, Kevin Peek, Ian Bairnson, David Pack (guitar); Hugo D'Alton (mandolin); David Snell (harp); Billy Lyall (recorder, keyboards); Eric Woolfson (harpsichord, keyboards, background vocals); Francis Monkman (harpsichord); Christopher North (keyboards); Joe Puerta, Darryl Runswick, Les Hurdle (bass); John Leach, Burleigh Drummond, Stuart Tosh (drums, percussion); The Westminster City School Boys Choir, Jack Harris, Terry Sylvester, Jane Powell, Bob Howes and The English Chorale (background vocals).
Includes liner notes by Alan Parsons.
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
The maiden voyage of the Alan Parsons Project, 1976's TALES OF MYSTERY & IMAGINATION, finds Parsons paying homage to the thrilling work of suspense legend Edgar Allan Poe. Although such an ambitious undertaking would likely be a disaster for most debuting artists, Parsons had engineered albums by the Beatles and Pink Floyd, making the British musician more than familiar with adventurous, highly textured records.
TALES opens with no less than film legend Orson Welles providing narration over Parsons's mesmerizing melody for "A Dream Within a Dream," while "The Raven" and "(The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" prove to be the most pop-oriented tracks on the album, employing electronically treated vocals and prog-rock pomp and circumstance to convey the arch strangeness of these stories. Much of TALES consists of keyboard-driven instrumentals that capture the suspenseful nature of Poe's work, most notably the haunting "Intermezzo" and the spine-chilling "Fall," both part of the "Fall of the House of Usher" suite. To listen to TALES OF MYSTERY & IMAGINATION is to hear a young artist challenging himself from his creative outset and crafting an intriguing set of songs in the process.
