This entire project was overseen by Parsons and Woolfson in hopes of satisfying fans and maybe a whole new listening audience. Stereotomy and Gaudi - have been reissued with previously unreleased bonus tracks. Now, the albums that followed - Pyramid, Eve, The Turn Of A Friendly Card, Ammonia Avenue, That album, Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, and the follow-up, I Robot, are still my favorite Alan Parsons Project releases, showcasing not only the pair’s musicianship and songwriting but a progressive rock sensibility as well. It took no time at all for the two to begin working together in earnest with Woolfson quickly creating the idea of a concept album based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Songwriter, piano player, vocalist, producer and manager for such notables asĬarl Douglas (remember “Kung Fu Fighting”?), Eric Woolfson met Parsons when the former was looking for a manager. New World is one more example of quality work largely missing its audience due to a combination of radio’s prevailing tastes and the taste-lock of fans of classic rock, who reason that since all the great rock music was created in decades past, there’s no point looking.īands and artists like Riverside, Steve Thorne, Blackfield and Dave Kerzner prove that if you never lost your taste for rock with a touch of class, complexity and integrity, it is worth looking.Beginning as a ‘tea-runner’ at Abbey Road studios, Alan Parsons graduated to engineering albums like the Beatles’ Let It Be and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon. Kerzner isn’t simply copying–each of these songs sounds like it could have been found in the tape vaults of one of these great bands of past years–that one track left off a multiplatinum-selling classic rock record. It’s okay to sound like someone else, as long as it’s the right someone else, and the music isn’t merely derivative, lacking the quality of the original. And “New World” with its smooth prog-lite arrangement and achingly melodic chorus harkens to the heyday of Alan Parsons Project. “Ocean of Stars” is reminiscent of Porcupine Tree.
The excerpt from “Stranded” is an almost too-perfect reproduction of Dark Side-era Floyd. And he’s created custom sound programming for Beyoncé and Rolling Stones tours. While Kerzner’s no household name, he’s worked with many who are: Madonna, Tom Waits, Smashing Pumpkins, Jon Anderson, Steven Wilson, Alan Parsons, and Neil Peart. The level of craftsmanship and the roster of top-notch collaborators brings to mind Brit Steve Thorne, whose excellent Into the Ether album is examined here.Īmong the prog rock notables making appearances on New World are Steve Hackett (Genesis), Nick D’Virgilio (Spock’s Beard), Keith Emerson (ELP), Francis Dunnery (It Bites), David Longdon (Big Big Train), Billy Sherwood (Yes) and Heather Findlay (Mostly Autumn). But as with all good progressive rock, the music stands on its own merit, regardless of whether the listener takes any notice of the overarching plotline. The co-founder of progressive rock band Sound of Contact, Kerzner has produced a solo debut prog concept album that tells a story, set in the future, of a man making his way from desert isolation back to the domed city from which he came. Pink Floyd fans starved for good new material, rejoice!Īmerican producer/songwriter/keyboardist Dave Kerzner has given you the next best thing to a decent new Pink Floyd record that you’re likely to hear, and a work far more engaging than Floyd’s mostly-instrumental Endless River, also released in 2014.
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