Stereotomy - Inspirations

Inspirations

The track "Chinese Whispers" is based on the game of Chinese whispers. It has some snippets of dialogue, but they are in English (not Chinese, as the song title implies) and heavily overlaid on top of each other. The words are taken from Edgar Allan Poe's work Murders in the Rue Morgue:

"...The larger links of the chain run thus -- Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichol, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer."

The titles of "Urbania" and "Where's the Walrus?" can be attributed to Lee Abrams, a (then) radio programmer for WLUP Radio (Chicago, IL) and friend of Parsons and Woolfson. Eric Woolfson remembers:

"He was really quite inspirational in this album in telling us what we'd been doing wrong, in his view, on the previous albums... `Urbania’ was one of the words he came out with during the course of a long conversation. Another title he's responsible for... is `Where's the Walrus,’ the other instrumental, 'cause he was really giving us a hard time, I must tell you: 'Your guitar sounds are too soft, and your whole approach is, you know, slack, and your lyrics—there’s no great lyrics anymore! I mean, where's the walrus? I don't hear the walrus!' Referring, of course, to John Lennon's `I am the Walrus’..."

Abrams is frequently credited on Project recordings as "Mr. Laser Beam" ("laser beam" being an anagram of Lee Abrams).

• The song Limelight was used by NBC Sports at the close of the 1986 World Series.