The Alan Parsons Project - I Robot (1977)

Steve:

Although I Robot was commercially successful and is widely considered as one Alan Parsons' best albums, I'm still surprised that it isn't more highly regarded than it is, considering its impressive pedigree. Alan Parsons was a studio engineer who worked at EMI Studios (Abbey Road) and honed his craft by playing a key role in the recording of the Beatles' Abbey Road and Let it Be, and even more famously, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (DSotM). The latter album inspired him to perfect his own brand of conceptual studio rock, with the help of co-songwriter Eric Woolfson (sitting to Parsons' right, below) and a rotating cast of singers and studio musicians, collectively known as The Alan Parsons Project. The band acquired their name by accident; it was still unnamed when they began recording, and the tapes were labeled only with that generic descriptor - but it stuck. With I Robot, The Alan Parsons Project created what I consider to be an ideal companion piece to DSotM; considering the popularity of that record, I feel the potential audience and universal appeal of I Robot have yet to be fully realized.

My first exposure to The Alan Parsons Project was via a compilation album, a demonstration record put out by Maxell - they had one called "Rock" and at least two called "Jazz". An odd product, to be sure. Maxell, of course, manufactured cassette tapes amidst the concern about "home recording is killing the record industry." Could this have been Maxell's effort to kill the industry from within by giving consumers records that were tailor-made to be copied onto cassette? Joking aside, the last track on the Rock sampler was "Genesis, Ch. 1, V. 32", which is the concluding track on I Robot. It's a powerful, ominous instrumental, and it made me all the more curious about I Robot when the album eventually entered Dan's collection.

Like DSotM, I Robot's musical selections flow in an organically paced sequence across each album side, often with one track segueing into the next. Both albums explore different facets of a unifying concept: madness and what drives people to it, in Pink Floyd's case; and the paradox of becoming a slave to technological advances that were designed to free us, in I Robot's case. Isaac Asimov's book of short stories titled I, Robot was the obvious inspiration behind the concept, although I have not read it myself, nor have I seen the 2004 movie of the same name. I say this to assure the reader that I may not have done as much research for this post as I could have, but at least I know what I don't know. 

Musical highlights on I Robot are many. "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You" has a complex funk groove and a jazzy chord structure, and it still gets a good amount of radio airplay. It also has a great vocal by frequent collaborator Lenny Zakatek; "Games People Play" is another hit single he'd sing in a couple of years. The title track, which opens the album, is another classic, described by one reviewer as the sound of robots getting funky, which is an amusing image as well as an accurate one. "The Voice" is another favorite - its catchy bass line, dramatic instrumental mid-section, and placement at the start of side 2 make it analogous to "Money" from DSotM. Instrumental pieces otherwise dominate side 2, from the proto-trip-hop (really) of "Nucleus" to the full-on orchestral fright storm of "Total Eclipse" (also the original working title of a certain Pink Floyd album... coincidence?) to the aforementioned "Genesis, Ch. 1 V. 32". (Genesis Chapter 1 of the Bible, of course, has only 31 verses. Talk about a cliff hanger.)

Dan:

In 1977, I was wary about bands that weren't really bands. Real bands, in my mind, consisted of a bunch of musicians who performed and recorded together over some length of time, with substitutions as necessary. A recording engineer should just record bands, not usurp the musicians' art, or so I thought. But I Robot proved that my theory was naïve. Indeed, Parsons and Woolfson provided just what many "real" bands lacked - attention to the production of recorded music that equaled the attention paid to performance. I should have remembered that my favorite prog bands of the day all depended heavily on production as well as instrumental prowess - Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, Steely Dan, Brian Eno, King Crimson, among others. Nonetheless, it was unusual to have the band named after the producer/engineer.

Obviously, the listening world rewarded such projects with album sales and awards. An unlikely following developed among audiophiles who normally value limited interference in the chain between performance and playback. But the audiophile press raved about I Robot as a sonic masterpiece. So I checked it out.

Steve nails the positive aspects of I Robot, so there is no need to repeat them. I would, however, like to single out my personal favorite song - "Don't Let It Show." It's not a battle cry for introversion, but rather a tense plea for deception following what appears to be a breakup. Ambiguity and struggle are reflected in the singer's request to "keep it inside of you," even though it's the wrong thing to say. So it's selfless and selfish at the same time. Sad, yet interesting, and nicely sung by Dave Townsend.