While the sound of this album is similar to some of the soft, ethereal tracks by the Alan Parsons Project, none of the writing or performance credits in the sleeve notes go to Alan Parsons, except for one short and simple instrumental part on "Temporalia" (the other instrumentals were written by drummer Stuart Elliott and guitarist Ian Bairnson), the Japanese bonus track "Beginnings" which also features his voice, and organ on "No Future in the Past"; his relation to the album is almost exclusively as producer.

The themes of time, time travel, and memory of the past had been suggested by Parsons as subject matter for the second Alan Parsons Project album,[2] but writing partner Eric Woolfson favoured a purely futuristic theme of robotic beings eventually displacing the human race, which eventually resulted in the album I Robot.

[3] "Ignorance Is Bliss" talks about how sad people are in comparison to ancient and simpler times, and the possibility of change for good to a simple way of life.

The album cover has several images related to time and popular time-travel icons, including a photography camera, a clock mechanism, a police box as a reference to the TARDIS in Doctor Who, a wormhole-like tunnel effect from the opening sequence, a DeLorean sports car referring to the Back to the Future series, and a child playing with a model ship from the Star Trek franchise.

Evil" (edit) is a remix of "The Time Machine" that features the voice of Mike Myers from the second Austin Powers movie, The Spy Who Shagged Me, in which the Alan Parsons Project is mentioned.