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Pyramid

The Alan Parsons Project - Pyramid Audio CD

A fair review of the The Alan Parsons Project "Pyramid" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Alan Parsons Project reviews here, or go back to the The Alan Parsons Project tabs.

Band: The Alan Parsons Project
Title: Pyramid
Rating:

Release Date: 2008-02-01
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Voyager 2: What Goes Up... 3: Eagle Will Rise Again 4: One More River 5: Can't Take It with You 6: In the Lap of the Gods 7: Pyromania 8: Hyper-Gamma-Spaces 9: Shadow of a Lonely Man

APP's Crossroads
Prog rock was dying off,disco was controversial,punk was pushed as a singles medium and funk was just beginning to get mixed up with disco haters. For some reason I am not 100% sure of 1978 was a somewhat difficult year for full lengh albums. It was all pretty confusing. At the time there only seemed like a few fully safe places to go. Even though Alan Parson's Project always had more of a "prog pop" leaning as opposed to being heavier this album tries at a certain kind of concept and to some extent it worked. As it stands it also serves as the beginning of "prog" albums moving steadily away from the bomastic pyrotechnics that it started with and focusing more on seeing how progression could work in terms of shorter pop structures rather than extended runs. "Voyager" isn't a bad beginning. It's imaginative enough for it's function but works as pop too. Honestly "What Goes Up",the dynamic closer "Shadow Of A Lonely Man" and the. . . well the more fusion jazzy-styled "One More River" are all pretty much standard pop/rock underneath some of the more lavish production. "The Eagle Will Rise Again","In The Lap Of The Gods" and "Pyramania" extended more strongly on the loosely Egyptian concept. My personel favorite song on the album is the instrumental "Hyper-Gamma-Spaces",this really funky electronic synth,prog/fusion tune that is the kind of thing you'd expect to hear on a Passport album such as Sky Blue. Not having too much familarity with APP's music aside from the hits,Ammonia Avenue and Vulture Culture. . . . if this is one of their weaker albums. Primarily I am a funk and fusion fan and you'll notice how I am often finding referrences to those styles in pretty much everything I listen to. It really is there,especially if your looking for it. Those genres did gradually lead me into listening to both acoustic jazz and some progressive rock for example. Also of importance is where I live music in those genres are much easier to locate. Besides if progressive rock had some heavy improvisational or even (heaven forbid lol) FUNKY elements to it I figure it all goes with the title itself.

Pyramid
It has 2 decent songs to check out "What Goes Up. . " & "Pyramania". Overall the CD was good, I liked it.

pyramid
This should be the most boring band in the world to me. Pyramid should bore me to tears because Alan Parsons Project should bore me to tears. They should be a band that writes music to help me fall asleep. They should be pleasant background music and nothing more. However, they're NONE of those things.

Alan Parsons Project, while sounding a LOT like Pink Floyd on several occasions as far as atmosphere and songwriting goes, manages to escape the boredom feeling most similar artists fall victim to and somehow, perhaps with amazing talent and an ability to write vocal melodies, Alan Parsons is quite the underrated musician. In fact, he's much more underrated these days, in a world where people insist on remembering Pink Floyd and forgetting the imitators. Nonsense.

Pyramid isn't quite as good as I Robot in my opinion because the songwriting takes one step back. However, one step back isn't exactly breaking your mothers back, har har. I mean, one step back isn't exactly a MAJOR step back. I really enjoy just about everything on Pyramid. It's *always* important for a band like this to remember to write solid vocal melodies and luckily the band remembered to do so for this release.

The album even ends on a pretty sad note. Listen to the lyrics on "Shadow of a Lonely Man" and you get the feeling someone in the band was seriously depressed. Maybe not, but it sure sounds that way. "One More River" sounds like Al Stewart to me. "Pyramania" is just flat out awesome. I remember this song as a small child. The memories never escaped my mind! It's like carnival music with a really really high atmosphere. What a swirly little melody it has though!

That one instrumental near the end is quite melodic and enough to declare it the best song on the album with its intense outerspace flow and feel. The other instrumental is more about pyramid-related atmosphere with a slow, quiet build-up, but it's good too!

Overall this is another solid one ladies and gentlemen. Pick it up soon.

The Mayan panoramas on my pyramid pajamas
It is one of the few APP albums to not notch a top 40 single. The third Alan Parsons Project album was kind of lost in the middle of his Sci-Fi progressive epic I Robot and the hits that started coming once he released Eve. It's also the last of his truly old-school free-from FM Radio rock albums, playing heavily with the instrumentations and the concept.

For this album, it was the Pyramid Craze and the fascination with King Tut that informed the songs. The unconventional instrumentation of "In The Lap Of The Gods" was the last time Parsons would enter into that kind of symphonic lustre, and APP's trademark instrumental style makes two appearances with "Hyper Gamma Spaces" and "Voyager. " The terrific ballads drop in with "Shadow of a Lonely Man" and Colin Blunstone's well sung "The Eagle Will Rise Again. "

The thematic leaning towards making monuments to yourself ("What Goes Up" and "You Can't Take it With You") make for intriguing, thoughtful songs, while the goofy "Pyramania" is the song that actually does fiddle around with the Pyramid theme (and may be the most humorous thing APP ever recorded) the most. But the main theme of the album, man's quest for immortality, is the over-riding purpose of the songs. Be it our desires and doubts toward be the biggest and most noticed ("If all things will fall, why build a miracle at all?") to our own refusal to acknowledge our folly ("The last thing of all that was on my mind was the close at the end of the show" from "Shadow of a Lonely Man"), this was the last Alan Parsons Project to really touch me emotionally. While future and more popular albums (Eye in the Sky, Turn of a Friendly Card) are still good albums overall, they were more focused on a glossy and streamlined sound. "Pyramid" was a grandiose goodbye to the 70's, and still holds a special place in my CD collection.

So where's the remaster, already?.

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