The Alan Parsons Project Album: “I Robot [Bonus Tracks]”

Like many people, my primary exposure to the Alan Parsons Project had been strictly their top 40 hits. Shortly after the release of "Eye in the Sky", I was reassigned to an Air Force base in Korea (early 80's). While there, one of the friends I made was a huge Alan Parsons fan and had all of their albums. I borrowed and listened to them all over time, but it was this one, "I Robot", which I found to be a masterpiece. Although all of the Parsons Project albums are concept albums, this one is the ultimate concept album. Most people are familiar with the radio hit "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You", but that is just one good song on an album filled with great music, that just seems to naturally flow together in the order in which it is presented. "Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)" is one of the most stunningly beautiful songs ever recorded by anyone. "Some Other Time" is good enough to have been a hit single. The production and musicianship are incredible. This is prog-rock at its absolute best.

A musical meditation of the "Rise Of Machine and The Decline Of Man," the second Alan Parsons Project album hit all the notes that "Tales Of Mystery and Imagination" missed. For starters, this was a straight forward rock album, without the debut's classical pretensions. It was also where Parsons perfected his atmospheric instrumentals, opening the album with the (precursor to electronica) title track and then ending with the moody "Genesis Ch 1 V 32." You do get the jarring soundtrack climax of "Total Eclipse," which I always guessed was where man got terminated from the scene.

For an album that dealt with the fall of the human race, "I Robot" is a surprisingly human affair. The slow beat disco of "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You" and the dance floor paranoia of "The Voice" are anything but mechanical. The ballads of loss, "Don't Let It Show" and "Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)" could be about any typical heartbreak. Even Pat Benatar could spot the drama inherent to "Don't Let It Show," including it on her debut.

It wasn't just the drama and the sci-fi that made "I Robot" so interesting. It was the musicianship. Not as pretentious as ELP and bringing the acrobatics of Yes down to bite size nuggets, Parsons had no difficulty in constructing pop that was progressive, meticulously produced and built up like the studio architect that he is. The Alan Parsons Project recording an album in the period of the seventies this pristine when disco's big boom was steamrollering everything in its path was a pretty bold statement then. Because of Parsons' attention to detail overriding any urge to make music of the moment, "I Robot" still holds up almost 30 years later.

The first book I ready by Isaac Asimov was "I Robot," from whence the album got its name. Glad I did.

So, when the albmum came out in '77, I bought it without having heard of Alan Parsons or a note on the vinyl. Then I bought it on CD. Then the Mobile High Fidelity Half Speed Master vinyl pressing. And now on the DVD -- which is almost impossible to find. Glad I did. R2D2 would be proud. (Robot humor!)

The music on the album is mainstream progressive, if there is such a thing. Heavy on the synthesizers, less trebble than Supertramp, less complex than Emerson, Lake and Palmer or Yes, played by some of the best musicians around, superbly engineered and mostly accessible and enjoyable. The first two thirds of the album contains some of the best rock from the late '70s. However, the album seems to fall apart at the end. On Nucleus, Total Eclipse and Genesis Ch. 1 v. 32, the Project goes off into some quasi-post 1900 classical, pre Steve Roach ambient filler which is supposed to create atmosphere. It is not bad music, but it is in such discord with the rest of the concept album that it almost destroys it. Luckily, the experimental stuff is lumped at the end of the album (the "B" side on the vinyl) and the rest is so good, that you can just ignore it, and feel happy with the purchase!

Why buy the DVD? It sounds better. CDs always leave me fiddling with the trebble to fix what is an inherently fatigue inducing medium. DVD-A and SACD with their higher sampling rate fix most of those problems. And with the 5.1 track on most DVD-A and SACDs, you get even more data. Unfortunately, here you get only two track stereo. But what is here is very good, and significantly better than the CD. I did an A/B comparison between the DVD and the audiophile Mobile High Fidelity vinyl pressing. Usually, the DVD-A is better than the MoFi pressing. Here, it's a toss up. The MoFi version has a more interesting sound, a little fuller and with a brighter high end. (It may be the Shure phono cartridge!) At times, they are nearly indistinguishable. On the other hand, the DVD may be more honest. Either way, you are miles ahead of the CD. Well worth the price.

Alan Parsons single-handedly helped me discover the true meaning of stereophonic sound with this recording and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which he engineered. The instrumental title track that opens I Robot literally swirls in the room as it oozes from speaker to speaker; it's even more impressive when played through headphones! I Robot fades into the stylish, rocking I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You, the Project's first real breakthrough song and a great driving song to boot. Other highlights can be found in Breakdown, another radio hit, and in Total Eclipse, in which a very sinister-sounding chorus (like something from the movie "The Omen") howls and bellows until Alan brings us back down with the album-closing instrumetal, Genesis, Ch.1, V.32. While Parsons was hardly the first rock artist to add strings, brass and a choir to the mix, he does it here with finesse; it never gets out of control. It took a few more years from this point for the Project to really hit a commercial and popular peak, but for me, I Robot and the follow-up, Pyramania, showcase the Alan Parsons Project at their creative peak.

The Alan Parsons Project really came at the wrong time. When the music industry was desperate to sign up punk bands who could barely play a few chords, here was a collective of skilled musicians, sublimating their own identities in support of a producer with prog-rock leanings. And by the time CD technology arrived, the Alan Parsons Project had already cut most of their best work, and the problem was that, when it came to replacing our favourite LPs with the CD version, APP albums weren't typically top of our list.

So I will be the first to admit that I've neglected APP over the years. It is over 20 years since I heard this album and, having just bought it on CD, it is sheer joy to hear so many high-quality tracks that I'd had nagging in the back of my mind over the years and I'd been unable to place. I'd previously bought an APP compilation on CD, but classics such as 'Some Other Time' and 'The Voice' seem to have been excluded from all his 'Best of' collections.

This CD is AAD and not remastered, but it sounds pretty good, all the same. (Parsons gave its predecessor, 'Tales of Mystery', a thorough re-working for CD, not only remastering it but also getting Ian Bairnson to lay down new guitar tracks.)

When 'Tales of Mystery' came out in 1976, there was a certain amount of hype about it, much of it related to Parsons' work on DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. The album even got favourably reviewed by Derek Jewell on Radio 3's 'Sounds Interesting'. But some buyers, myself included, were disappointed at the time, because of the 'difficult' side two, which was largely classical. It therefore came as a great relief that the follow-up 'I Robot' wasted none of its tracks on classical pretensions.

I first heard the single 'I wouldn't want to be like you' when visiting the US for the first time. I was spending up to eight hours a day on a Trekamerica minibus, going from NY to LA, fed an unbroken diet of pop radio, which at the time seemed to revolve around endless repetitions of 'Easy' by the Commodores, 'Nobody does it better' by Carly Simon, and the disco version of the 'Star Wars' theme. Suddenly, towards the end of the holiday, stations started playing 'I wouldn't want to be like you', and it was both a relief and a joy to discover that APP had cut a second album and made a decent single. I just had to buy the LP as soon as I returned to Britain.

This album is rather more consistent than its predecessor. Gone as vocalists are Arthur Brown and John Miles, but in their place are a strong team headed by Lenny Zakatek and a remarkably ego-free Steve Harley.

In summary, the only thing preventing this from being a 5-star rating is that it's not remastered. Strongly recommended nevertheless -- you'll be surprised how many tunes you remember! This team will only have achieved the long-term recognition they deserve as composers when a student on 'Pop Idol' chooses to sing 'Some Other Time'!