Alan Parsons Project - I Robot

The follow-up to their debut "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" was disappointing by comparison. It was inspired by an Isaac Asimov novel, which I would bet that most listeners (including me) are not familiar with. The story seems to be incidental to the music though. It's dominated by dated pop songs like "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You", which whiff of 1970's disco cheese, and drippy ballads like "Don't Let it Show" and "Some Other Time". It often sounds like the Bee Gees, especially "The Voice", which features an effective (or possibly annoying, depending on your mood) miaowing guitar sound, but some poor singing. The pop singles are surrounded as before with instrumental pieces. These are immaculately arranged, with tastefully restrained orchestral colours, but a little less powerful than their debut. It's to their credit that while they sound so dated on the pop-songs, they also manage to make futuristic, 1990's-sounding electronic soundscapes such as "Nucleus", which I might have guessed was done by The Orb. They clearly know their sci-fi music - "Total Eclipse" is in the fuzzy cluster style of the Ligeti stuff which was used in "2001 - A Space Odyssey".

Not bad overall, but it doesn't inspire me to investigate any more of the vast amount of material that the Alan Parsons Project produced.

May 5, 2004

6 out of 10

previous | next