Alan Parsons-Try Anything Once (1993)

With Eric Woolfson's departure after the 1987 album "Gaudi", The Alan Parsons Project's successful eleven-year run, which had yielded ten albums, came to an end. Consequently, the producer, engineer, composer, and musician Alan Parsons dropped the "Project" moniker from his next recording. Six years later came this first album by Alan Parsons, which, as with all the project's previous releases, featured a wide array of collaborating musicians, including Chris Thompson, Eric Stewart, Ian Bairnson, David Pack, Andrew Powell, and Stuart Elliott, among others virtually the same musicians who had participated in all the previous albums. This time, Parsons allowed some of the musicians to contribute to the songwriting, particularly Powell and Bairnson. Powell set aside his role as an orchestral arranger to showcase his keyboard skills, while Bairnson contributed his talent as a composer. "Try Anything Once" is composed of rich melodies of sophisticated pop with certain progressive elements such as the opening "The Three of Me", art rock is present in the splendid "Turn It Up", "I'm Talkin' to You" and "Mr. Time", while the hard rock "Back Against the Wall" or the grandiose symphonic "Oh Life", make up a very worthy work from one of the best and most iconic sound engineers in the history of rock music.