Timothy Leary may be dead, but he's also on an album looking in. A planned tribute to the psychedelic guru and "designer death" advocate will also serve as a sort of farewell to poet Allen Ginsberg, who passed away Saturday. The Mercury Records album "Timothy Leary: Beyond Life" features Ginsberg reading the preface he wrote to Leary's book "Jail Notes," as well as excerpts from Leary's 1967 Mercury album, "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" and snippets of a 1996 interview with the '60s icon. It also includes musical contributions from Ministry and the Moody Blues.

\par \par "The timing was ironic," says David Silver, the album's co-producer and a vice president of A&R for Mercury. "We've been immersed in Timothy's death and this project, and now Allen slips away ... We're losing the great thinkers of our time."

\par \par The album will be released sometime this spring along with a documentary video entitled "Timothy Leary Lives." Plans also call for some kind of tribute event to be held in New York City on May 20.

\par \par "The content and feel [of the album] ranges from Nepalese temple singers to contemporary hip-hop," says Silver, who wrote much of the music on the album with co-producer Jim Wilson. "Much of it is Timothy's voice over various ambient bits, plus there's contributions from guest performers."

\par \par The most notable music track is the Moody Blues' reworking of their 1968 song "Legend of a Mind," which immortalized Leary's death in song 28 years before it happened with the line "Timothy Leary's dead/No, no, he's on the outside looking in." Following Leary's diagnosis of prostate cancer last year, the Moody Blues re-cut a partly acoustic version of the song with Silver in which the line was changed to "Timothy Leary lives."

\par \par The album closes with "Lion's Mouth," a 10-minute Ministry track Silver describes as "a hallucinatory, ghostly trip with Timothy."

\par \par Despite that, "it's not a morbid or dreary record," Silver adds. "