Description

Tales of Mystery and Imagination – Edgar Alan Poe (Limited Edition) is a collector’s edition of the debut album by the progressive rock group The Alan Parsons Project, released in 1976. The album’s avant-garde soundscapes kept it from being a blockbuster, but the interesting lyrical and musical themes — retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe — attracted a small audience.

The title of the album is taken from a popular title for Poe’s macabre tales of the same name, Tales of Mystery & Imagination, first published in 1908 and many times since under this name. Critical reaction to the album was often mixed; for example, Rolling Stone’s Billy Altman concluded that it mostly failed at reproducing Poe’s tension and macabre fear, ending by claiming that “devotees of Gothic literature will have to wait for someone with more of the macabre in their blood for a truer musical reading of Poe’s often terrifying works”.

The original version of the album was available for several years on vinyl and cassette, but was not immediately available on CD. This was due in part to Parsons’ desire to rework some tracks. In 1987, Parsons completely remixed the album, including additional guitar passages and narration (by Orson Welles) as well as updating the production style to include heavy reverb and the gated reverb snare drum sound, which was popular in the 1980s.

In 1994 Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL) released the original 1976 version on CD (UDCD-606), making the original available digitally for the first time. In 2007, a Deluxe Edition released by Universal Music included both the 1976 and the 1987 versions re=mastered by Alan Parsons during 2006 with eight additional bonus tracks.

In July, 2010, the album was named as one of Classic Rock magazine’s “50 Albums That Built Prog Rock”.

Original LP Release on Mobile Fidelity MFSL 1-204. Mint. Factory Sealed. Limited Edition #284.