The Alan Parsons Project - Eye In The Sky: 35th Anniversary Box Set album review

A post-prog soft-rock classic expanded to the nth degree

By Johnny Sharp
( Classic Rock )
published
Cover art for The Alan Parsons Project - Eye In The Sky: 35th Anniversary Box Set album

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Are 35th anniversaries a thing now? Evidently so. But never mind the slightly random-sounding occasion, feel the weight of this shelf-creaking uber-package.

Incorporating four CDs, a double LP, a poster, a 60-page hardback book, a bonus seven-inch flexi-disc, 5.1 surround sound versions and all, it surely begs the question of what else they can come up with for the 40th, 45th or 50th anniversary reissues? An official APP souvenir eye that actually flies in the sky?

The bonus material from the 2007 (25th-anniversary) reissue is all here, alongside Songwriting Diary – embryonic versions of the songs from one of APP’s best sets of symphonic soft rock.

Eye In The Sky, Gemini and Silence And I are no more than Dictaphone-recorded aidemémoires, yet they still hold a certain fascination. And the fact that they were clearly intended for Parsons’ benefit rather than broadcast doesn’t stop them from holding a certain intrigue for anyone interested in how big, expansive sounds like Eye In The Sky grow from small, creative acorns.

Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.