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A Valid Path

Track-by-track commentary from Alan Parsons

Return To Tunguska

This track is with a British Electronica act called Shpongle. The title stems from an account of a cataclysmic explosion in Siberia in 1906.There is plenty of coverage about it on the Internet so I won't go into it here. The main man behind Shpongle is Simon Posford who came to work in my studio in California. It was the first track to be recorded, so maybe it's uncoincidental that it opens the CD. David Gilmour agreed to record his solo on it about a year later - it was recorded in his own country studio in England.

Return to Tunguska MP3 clip

More Lost Without You

This is the song, which many feel is a prime single candidate. It features P.J. Olsson on vocals, a singer/songwriter/computer dude from Houghton, Michigan. P.J also made a significant contribution as a computer programmer and engineer on the album and is currently the principal vocalist in the live band.

More Lost Without You MP3 Clip

Mammagamma 04

This is a remake of an instrumental, originally from Eye In The Sky. My son, Jeremy had always wanted to re-vamp this tune (along with The Raven) and I think he did a great job. It's faster and dancier than the original and much more interesting sonically. I'm hoping this will get played in the clubs. Any similarity to the Macarena is purely intentional - I think they stole the idea from the APP anyway!

Mammagamma 04 MP3 Clip

We Play The Game

I met Ken Jordan from The Crystal Method at a Pro Audio trade show in 2003. We both admired each other's music and we resolved to get together and record something. This is the result. Ken and his partner Scott Kirkland have an amazing working technique - they each sit at the computer for about half an hour at a time and make their own additions to the track and then walk away leaving it to the other for a while. I wrote the top line, all the lyrics and for the first time ever, sang the lead vocal all the way through. It's vaguely about conflicts - between individuals or nations - you decide.

We Play The Game MP3 Clip

Tijuaniac

The Nortec Collective is a Mexican Electronic band from Tijuana - hence the title. They work almost exclusively with laptop computers and are a sight to see when they are performing together. They go out in different combinations according to their availability - one of them for example is a professional dentist! This is the chill-out track of the album. I love how we worked together to combine spacey electronic textures with real mariachi brass and Mexican spoken word and traditional bar singing.

Tijuaniac MP3 Clip

L'Arc En Ciel

This means "Rainbow" in French. For this track I worked with a guy called 'Q', otherwise known as Uberzone. We spent hours taking raindrop samples and turning them into rhythmic patterns. We actually generated some of the raindrops from a shower dripping into a bathtub! The track also features an amazing guitar player from Santa Barbara by the name of Alastair Greene. The track is dedicated to a good friend, Anson Grossfeld, who lost his fight with cancer early in 2004. His wife Sonia tells that there was a beautiful rainbow over the hills in Los Angeles the moment that he died.

L’Arc En Ciel MP3 Clip

A Recurring Dream Within A Dream

This is another catalog item re-visited with my son, Jeremy. It's a combination of two tracks from the Tales Of Mystery And Imagination album. One of my favorite sounds that Jeremy assembled is from a computer generated chanting Tibetan Monk known as "Delay Lama" (www.audionerdz.com). I use a vocoder just as on the 1976 version of The Raven and play keyboards and sing all the backing vocals. It still has the familiar bass line from the original but it's quite substantially different structure-wise.

One of the reasons for remaking two of the old tracks is to keep the link between past and present. I think it demonstrates rather well how times have changed and it makes an interesting comparison between production and sound techniques between then and now.

A Recurring Dream Within A Dream MP3 Clip

You Can Run

This is a song I wrote with my old buddy from Ambrosia, David Pack, who also sings all the vocals and plays a guitar or two as well. P.J. came up with some amazing vocal processing for the intro and outro which sounds like a talking baby, but it's actually a vocal line from the song sung by David - "Ain't Nothing Human 'Bout The Human Race". Another track, which I hope, will have Club potential. We decided to call this new duo "Deep E", a play on David's initials.

You Can Run MP3 Clip

Chomolungma

This is an instrumental piece written by Jeremy, P.J. and myself. The album started life as a tribute to the great explorers like Christopher Columbus and Vasco De Garma. This is the only remnant from that concept and is inspired by the famous Mount Everest conquest in the 1950s. Chomolungma is the local word for the mountain. This last track on the album is wound up by the unmistakable voice of John Cleese (www.pythonline.com/plugs/cleese/index.shtml). The dialog came from a radio interview about the Monty Python movies (recently released on DVD), which John recorded in Santa Barbara, California, the town where I now live. The sessions were produced by an old friend from Philadelphia, Denny Somach, who introduced me to John and helped me get his permission to use the clip.

Chomolungma MP3 Clip

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