ALAN PARSONS PROJECT: THE SICILIAN DEFENCE (1981/2014)
1) P-K4; 2) P-Qb4; 3) Kt-KB3;
4) ...Kt-QB3; 5) P-Q4; 6) PxP; 7) KtxP; 8) Kt-B3; 9) Kt-QB3; 10) P-Q3.
I am not even sure if this stuff deserves a
separate review, but since it now exists as an officially released separate
album — albeit only as a «bonus» part of the newly released 11-CD boxset that
contains all of the Project's albums — it probably does merit a few words and a
chuckle, if only to show that these guys did have their unique brand of «humor»,
nothing about which was technically funny, but still, it does help to learn
about this considering how «stiff» we usually consider these Parsons and
Woolfson guys.
So, apparently, the story goes that in 1981,
the two were locked in a formal battle with Arista over some contract details,
and, unsatisfied as they were, decided to get out of the contract by submitting
one last due album that they'd record in three days, rather than the several
months that it usually took their sense of perfectionism to be pacified. So
they went into the studio, quickly threw together a bunch of instrumental
tracks made on-the-spot, named them after various chess moves, figuratively
called the album The Sicilian Defence
(in which Arista people, apparently, played white and the Project played
black), and submitted the results.
Said results, as the rumor went, frightened the
Arista people so much that they gave up without putting up too much of a fight,
renewed Parsons' and Woolfson's contract on profitable terms, and kept Alan with
them all the way up to his first solo album. The Sicilian Defence, in the meantime, was permanently shelved
(just as the duo had hoped it would), and vanished off the radar completely
for more than thirty years. Small bits and pieces were occasionally showed to
the public, but on the whole, Alan had no plans of ever releasing the whole
thing, and probably the only reason why it finally saw the light of day was acute
demand on the part of devoted fans — just the kind of people who'd want to buy
the complete boxset in order to get to the juicy bonus.
Now here is why it may be important to add those few words. The album got this
reputation for being a «musical joke», or even a display of «musical
hooliganry», and I am sure I even saw the word «atonal» used somewhere in a
brief description. This may lead one into thinking that Alan and Eric had
really let their hair down on this one, making something of a ʽRevolution No.
9ʼ, or of a Metal Machine Music, and
since «musical hooliganry» is definitely not
the kind of thing with which we are accustomed to associate those stern, glossy
British gentlemen, this can create an atmosphere of intrigue — indeed, it might
even make one spend all that extra money on the boxset just to hear what all
the hoopla was about.
More than likely, you will be seriously disappointed. There is nothing
«atonal», or «rebellious», or «hooliganish» about this record. And, in fact,
there couldn't be, since it had no gestation period and had to be made in three
days. Instead, it sounds more or less just like you'd expect an Alan Parsons
Project record, made in three days, to sound. A bunch of instrumental numbers —
all of them rhythmic, usually set to simple drum machine patterns, all of them
played either on synthesizer or on piano, all of them probably largely improvised,
but mostly in standard keys, using standard chords, and generating the usual
melancholic aura associated with the Project. Nothing particularly exciting —
and nothing particularly «Awful» with a large A. Boring, as a matter of fact:
just plain old boring.
The two longest tracks, ʽP-Qb4ʼ and ʽKt-QB3ʼ,
are piano pieces, of which the former, also known as ʽElsie's Themeʼ, was
earlier released in truncated form as a bonus track on Eve, and for good reason: it has the prettiest melody on the album,
nocturnal and elegant, that may deserve salvation, even if six minutes is still
overkill. ʽKt-QB3ʼ is even longer, mainly consists of one single jazzy theme
looped on endless repeat, and could, perhaps, work as a rhythm part for a more
elaborate composition, but nothing else.
The rest is basically just Parsons dicking
around with synthesizers without much forethought or afterthought — a couple of
the tracks sounding like, say, an early underworked demo for Pink Floyd's ʽOn
The Runʼ (maybe he did drag out one
of these, I have no idea), and others sounding like equally underworked demos
for the Project's own stuff, usually with one or two basic musical ideas per
track. Nothing revealing in here, except that it might be interesting to hear, very quickly, what kinds of things
Parsons could come up with when working on autopilot. Well, it ain't Blonde On Blonde, where composing and
recording on-the-spot are concerned, that one thing at least is for sure.
Best thing about it all is we now know what
exactly is Alan Parsons' idea of the proverbial «album of fart noises» —
apparently, these guys are so stuffy, they cannot even allow themselves to fart
anything other than MIDI grooves and piano romances. Yet I cannot officially
condemn the album with a thumbs down, since we have all been warned and there has
never been one single good word on the part of Alan himself about the record.
Clearly, he didn't even release it in order to make an extra buck — most
likely, he just wanted to implode the «legend», so that people no longer harass
him about the «legendary lost Alan Parsons Project album». So maybe this review
can offer a little modest help with this purpose.
Ah, the Classical Defence, when White can choose betweent the Richter-Rauser 11 (6).Bg5, the Sozin 11 (6).Bc4 and the quiet 11 (6).Be2, which can become the Boleslavky, the Scheveningen or the Dragon. Alan Parson though is one of the very few Anglo-Saxons who still uses descriptive notation. The far more common algebraic notation is 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6. Apparently he didn't bother enough to adapt the titles .....
ReplyDeleteDo consider that descriptive notation was still the rage in the Anglosphere in 1981. Edward Winter only a few years ago bemoaned the horrors inflicted on Bobby's 60 Games when converted to algebraic.
ReplyDeleteAlso, chess curio: when considering 2 ...d6, both ahead of their time A-listers like Alekhine and Tartakover recommended (and played, the very few times they faced it) the gambit 3. b4. The past is a foreign land, indeed...
Descriptive notation is longer, less useful, and less pleasant to read than algebraic notation. Album-wise there is a hint there, somewhere...
ReplyDeletedoes anybody has a piano sheet of P-Qb4
ReplyDeletePlease let me know if you find it. ready to buy. thx!
DeleteI'm listening now and surprisingly* find much to like here. Some of the piano tracks especially show a side to Eric Woolfson I wasn't really aware.
ReplyDelete(* maybe not so surprisingly, given that I have all the Project albums and like tracks off each of them)