The definitive Alan Parsons Project album, and also one of the most popular and enduring sources of television and radio background cues *ever*. Even if you have no idea who or what Alan Parsons Project is, you've heard snippets of this album. The album's use of echo for rhythmic counterpoint is artful, archetypal, and endlessly imitated. (It's hard for me to tell whether David Gilmour of Pink Floyd picked up his habit of playing against the echo from Alan Parsons in the DSOTM days, or Parsons picked the technique up from him. Probably a little of both.) The continuous rhythms of the instrumentals with their slowly transforming ostinato harmonies and atmospheric melodies foreshadow the electronic instrumentals of the late 1970s (Midnight Express) but even more significantly, help lay the foundation for a whole genre of dance electronica coming later in the 1980s and 90s. A classic and a must-have.