Tales of Mystery and Imagination undertakes the difficult task of transforming some of Edgar Allan Poe's writings into music. Alan Parsons, best known for engineering Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, conceptualized the project with Poe "appreciator" Eric Woolfson. Andrew Powell arranged and conducted the orchestra and choir that dominate the album and there are vocal appearances by John Miles, the Hollies' Terry Sylvester and Arthur Brown, among others.

Unfortunately, the tension and sense of impending, surreal terror that underscore most of Poe's work simply didn't get transferred into the musical interpretations. Arthur Brown's unique vocal ravings on "The Tell-Tale Heart" come closest because they supply the necessary dose of hysteria. The most ambitious track, "The Fall of the House of Usher," rises majestically with a Fantasia-like opening and a spectacular thunderstorm, then shifts into intermezzo and pavane passages that are quite moving. But the atonal, chaotic "fall" seems more an intrusion on the rest of the opus than the holocaustal finale it should have been.

There are, however, some very beautiful selections, particularly "The Cask of Amontillado" and the fascinating "The Raven." But devotees of Gothic literature will have to wait for someone with more of the macabre in their blood for a truer musical reading of Poe's often terrifying works. (RS 222)

BILLY ALTMAN