By 1978 the pyramids were everywhere — Tutankhamun touring the museums, pyramid power on the paperback racks — and the Alan Parsons Project made the album that moment was asking for. Three of its nine tracks have no words at all.

The short version

Pyramid was released by Arista on 26 May 1978 and recorded at Abbey Road between September 1977 and February 1978. It was the first Project album with Stuart Elliott on drums in place of Stuart Tosh, and Elliott would stay for the rest of the run. The record reached number 26 in the United States and number 49 in Britain, sold strongly in Canada and Germany, and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.

Pyramid power, and a change on the drum stool

The concept is exactly what the sleeve suggests: the pyramids of Giza, and the wave of popular fascination with them that ran through the United States and Britain in the middle of the decade. It is the loosest of the Project’s themes, which turns out to be a strength — it licenses everything from a hymn-like ballad to an instrumental built on synthesizer sequences, without any of it needing to advance an argument. It also let Woolfson, still executive producer rather than singer at this stage, build a running order around three wordless pieces without anyone objecting, and it gave Andrew Powell a free hand with choir and orchestra.

The sound

The result is widescreen, choir-backed symphonic pop. Elliott’s drumming is heavier and more propulsive than what came before, Bairnson’s guitar is further forward, and Duncan Mackay’s synthesizers do most of the colouring. Woolfson plays clavichord and virginals alongside the Fender Rhodes and the Projectron, which gives several tracks a deliberately antique edge. Phil Kenzie contributes the saxophone solos on one song, John Leach returns on kantele and cimbalom, and the English Chorale sings under Bob Howes. Three instrumentals are threaded through the running order, so the album breathes in a way the vocal-heavy later records do not.

Reading up on prog? The books go deeper →

The songs

‘Pyramania’, sung by Jack Harris, was released as a single in Britain in June 1978. ‘The Eagle Will Rise Again’ is the first Project lead vocal by Colin Blunstone, who would return on several later albums. ‘What Goes Up...’, with David Paton on lead, was the American single in September 1978 and reached number 87. ‘Voyager’ opens the record: two minutes and fourteen seconds of instrumental scene-setting that runs straight into the song behind it. ‘In the Lap of the Gods’ and ‘Hyper-Gamma-Spaces’ are the other two wordless pieces.

Reception and legacy

Trade reaction was warm rather than excited. Tony Jasper in Music Week found the album instrumentally varied but thought the lyrics sometimes banal; Cashbox said it went beyond production technique; Billboard called it aurally interesting. Commercially it did well outside Britain, going gold in the United States and multi-platinum in Canada, with gold certifications in Australia, New Zealand and Spain; the figure usually quoted for its worldwide sales is upwards of two million. The Grammy nomination was for the engineering, which is the honest place to look for what this record does best.

The verdict

Pyramid rewards listening straight through rather than in singles. Nothing on it went high in the American charts, and it hardly matters: the instrumentals are woven through the running order rather than parked at the edges, the choir writing is ambitious, and the theme is loose enough to let the music go where it wants. If I Robot is the album to hear first, this is the one to hear second.

Browse the bookshelf in the footer →