The Alan Parsons Project "Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe)"

Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe) is the debut studio album by British rock band The Alan Parsons Project. It was released on 1 May 1976 in the United States by 20th Century Fox Records and on 1 June 1976 in the United Kingdom by Charisma Records. The lyrical and musical themes of the album, which are retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, attracted a cult audience. The title of the album is taken from the title of a collection of Poe's macabre stories of the same name.

Musicians featured on the album include vocalists Arthur Brown of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown on "The Tell Tale Heart", John Miles on "The Cask of Amontillado" and "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether", and Terry Sylvester of The Hollies on "To One in Paradise". The complete line-up of bands Ambrosia and Pilot play on the record, along with keyboardist Francis Monkman of Curved Air and Sky.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination peaked at #38 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. The song "(The System Of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" peaked at No. 37 on the Pop Singles chart, and No. 62 in Canada.

"The Raven" features actor Leonard Whiting on lead vocals, with Alan Parsons performing vocals through an EMI vocoder. According to the album's liner notes, "The Raven" was the first rock song to feature a digital vocoder. The prelude section of "The Fall of the House of Usher", although uncredited, is taken verbatim from the opera fragment "La chute de la maison Usher" by Claude Debussy which was composed between 1908 and 1917. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is an instrumental suite which runs more than 16 minutes and takes up most of Side 2 of the recording.

The album's cover art was made by Hipgnosis. Storm Thorgerson said that Eric Woolfson and Parsons wanted a "classy" design, including a book of lyrics, lengthy credits and a chronology of Poe's life. He described the recurring image of the "taped" man:

Poe was preoccupied with entombment. Many of his characters have been incarcerated in some form or other - in coffins, brick walls or under floorboards. We came up with the 'taped' man - a mummy-like figure who is wrapped, not in bandages, but in 2" recording tape. This motif is partially horror-like, as well as being 'entombed', and the 2" tape appropriately suggests that the album is done by a producer in a studio, as opposed to a band recording material they will play on stage. Although the clients were intrigued by this idea they did not desire a pictorial cover but preferred instead a precise graphic representation. The narrow strip of illustration from George [Hardie] shows a long shadow of the taped man.

The booklet (attached to the inside of the cover) is composed of photos related to the songs, and line drawings which explore the taped man as he thrashes about in his restricted world and strives to unravel himself. The illustrated capital letters continue the idea. The layout and drawings are by Colin Elgie. The sleeve is one of our better attempts at combining photographs and illustration.

Originally simply called The Alan Parsons Project, the album was successful enough to achieve gold status. The identity of The Alan Parsons Project as a group was cemented on the second album, I Robot, in 1977.

The original version of the album was available for several years on vinyl and cassette, but was not immediately available on CD (the CD technology not being commercially available until 1982).

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. The CD notes that Welles never met Parsons or Eric Woolfson, but sent a tape to them of the performance shortly after the album was manufactured in 1976.

The first passage narrated by Welles on the 1987 remix (which comes before the first track, "A Dream Within a Dream") is sourced from an obscure nonfiction piece by Poe – No XVI of his Marginalia (from 1845 to 1849 Edgar Allan Poe titled some of his reflections and fragmentary material "Marginalia.") The second passage Welles reads (which comes before "The Fall of the House of Usher" (Prelude), seems to be a partial paraphrase or composite from nonfiction by Poe, chiefly from a collection of poems titled "Poems of Youth" by Poe (contained in "Introduction to Poems – 1831" in a section titled "Letter to Mr. B-----------"; the "Shadows of shadows passing" part of the quote comes from the Marginalia.

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 remastered by Alan Parsons during 2006 with eight additional bonus tracks.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons except "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Woolfson, Parsons, and Andrew Powell.

Side one

1. "A Dream Within a Dream" Instrumental 4:14
2. "The Raven" Alan Parsons, Leonard Whiting 3:57
3. "The Tell-Tale Heart" Arthur Brown (additional vocals: Jack Harris) 4:38
4. "The Cask of Amontillado" John Miles (additional vocals: Terry Sylvester) 4:33
5. "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" John Miles (additional vocals: Jack Harris) 4:20

Side two

1. "The Fall of the House of Usher   16:10
2. "To One in Paradise" Terry Sylvester (additional vocals: Eric Woolfson, Alan Parsons) 4:46

Orson Welles' narration does not appear on the original 1976 mix of the album. It does, however, on the 1987 remix: specifically on "A Dream Within a Dream", and on the Prelude of "The Fall of the House of Usher".