A VALID PATH

Surely not an easy album at all.In my opinion It could be good news if this album remained a sort of experimentation by Alan dealing with odiern PC possibilities in a musical context; a way of discovering the relationships between machines and music.

It's understood that this album is an unique case in all Parsons' discography, and if you're new to his works this is absolutely NOT the first album you should get: so I agree with the 3 stars definition : a good, but not essentially choice because I think that there are some good ideas on this one: "Return To Tunguska" the best album track by far is a very disquieting instrumental piece which features Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour; Computer - filtered vocals announce "More Lost Without You" the only song on the album which could have a been a succesful single; Interesting Latin influences appearing on track number 5: "Tijuaniac", an interesting song... this for the good parts ; ABSOLUTE RUBBISH instead a new version of Parsons' classic track "Mammagamma", called "Mammagamma 04" ; I found also very awful the remix of "A Dream Within A Dream / The Raven" , two great tracks which originally appeared on the Alan Parsons Project first album "Tales Of Mistery And Imagination" released in 1976, These disappointing "remix" ideas was brought in by Jeremy Parsons, Alan's son. The other tracks left me a bit cold, I mean : "We Play The Game", "You Can Run" and "Chomolungma".

Progressive Music first of all is also experimentation, and so I do not condemn "A Valid Path" , but here lies an objectivity matter, and so objectively talking as I said before this album isn't Parsons' easiest one, and surely not his best release...anyway being a very great Parsons' fan I liked it.

I really hope that Parsons will come back as soon as possible to release albums like "Try Anything Once" and "The Time Machine", the REAL, GREAT, IMMORTAL, Alan Parsons' sound!

It deserves 3 Stars.