Music Banter - View Single Post - Trollheart's Album Discography Reviews: The Alan Parsons Project

Trollheart · 10-06-2021, 02:20 PM

I Robot (1977)

This is, to be fair, not one of my favourite albums from the Alan Parsons Project, but I came across this review in a forgotten folder of documents recently, and it seems to have been written for my original journal, way back in 2008. That's a long time ago, and hey, I wrote it, so it may as well see the light of day, even if it is four years later.

On the whole, their albums have been pretty much consistently good over the years, but if I had to pick one of theirs I consider to be slightly sub-par, which would be the Alan Parsons Project record I listen to least, and perhaps like least, this would be it. I certainly don't hate it - don't hate any APP album, although it shares second place with The Time Machine as the one of theirs I'm most disappointed with - but it would be one of the last albums I would suggest to someone who was thinking of checking out their music.

The second album released by the band, I Robot is not a bad album at all, I just think later releases were a lot better. But there’s a lot to be excited about on this album. Three really good ballads, as well as what became the trademark of the APP, the instrumental. The album starts and ends with one, though the closer, entitled “Genesis Ch 1 v.32” reveals something of a mystery, thirteen years later. For more, read on.

The Alan Parsons Project has always been famous for utilising as many vocalists almost as tracks on their albums, and people who have sung on their albums include the likes of Lenny Zakatek, Colin Blunstone, Eric Woolfson, Chris Rainbow, David Paton and Gary Brooker, to mention just a few. It helped keep them fresh, so that each new song sounded different, and it was a formula that worked for the APP for over thirty years.

The album opens on one of those instrumentals, which is in fact the title track. It's a slowburner, starting very quietly and coming in on rising synth and keys then choral vocals, which sound female but could of course be created on a synth float across the melody, pulling in that sound that was to become so familiar on APP albums, the sort of fast bassy run on the keys (or maybe it is a bass, I'm no expert) and the guitar riffs that became so identified with Parsons' work. It becomes quite boppy as many of the Alan Parsons Project's instrumentals do, or did, and the female choral voices are joined by male ones as the piece runs on. To Parsons' credit, it doesn't sound overly robotic, which is how you would probably have expected him to approach such a composition.

That takes us to the first vocal track, and a singer not too often used by APP, with a much rougher, more rock-and-roll voice than the likes of Blunstone and Woolfson, Lenny Zakatek. He usually tends to feature, if at all, on only one track per album, and here he puts in a good performance on “I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You”, with an ominous piano opening which soon kicks into a real rocker (for the APP, that is: they were not exactly ever known for totally rockin' out), and his voice really suits the track. In fact, you can see seeds sown here that would bear fruit in later albums. This song is echoed two years later in “You Lie Down With Dogs” and also “I’d Rather Be a Man”, both from the excellent Eve album.

The first of three ballads is next up, with the rather wistful and wonderful “Some Other Time” which, though it starts off all folky and pastoral and with Peter Straker on lead vocals gets a little rockier as it goes on. Straker would not feature on any other Parsons albums, and indeed many of the vocalists here - some of them legendary icons - would only sing on this album, before Alan established his stable of vocalists, among them Colin Blunstone, David Paton, Chris Rainbow and John Miles. “Breakdown” just doesn't do it for me. It's a mid-paced rocker but I feel it adds nothing to the album, and even with Hollies legend Allan Clarke on vocals I can't get into the song.

One of the standouts comes in the form of the second ballad, the gentle “Don't Let it Show”, on vocals a man who would reprise his role on the next album but after that there would be very little heard about Dave Townsend. It's a sterling turn from him here though, and his voice is very heartfelt and emotional. The song itself rides on soft organ from Parsons, with the slow but sudden percussion really filling out the track. Future echoes, as it were, from APP's big hit single “Old and Wise”, in the lyric, when he sings ”If you smile when they mention my name/ They'll never own you/ And if you laugh when they say I'm to blame/ They'll never know you”. It also features what I'd term the “Parsons march”, which became so much a part of the APP sound, and indeed it's this that takes the track out to fade.

Riding on a thick, funky bass and some seriously new-wave keyboards, “The Voice” is another song I could live without on this album, though to be fair they are in the minority. Another rock legend takes the mike to help Parsons out on this, and it's Cockney Rebel's Steve Harley. He does a great job, but can only work with what he's got, and I would put this in the realm of a bonus track or an unreleased one; I don't think it's good enough to be on the album.

It says something that out of the ten tracks on this album, four of them are instrumentals, and each different. Not too many bands could get away with that, but the Alan Parsons Project always did, primarily because their instrumentals were just so damn good! Take a listen to “Pipeline” from Ammonia Avenue, or “Hyper-gamma Spaces” from Pyramid to see what I mean. And who could forget the jaunty yet haunting “Sirius”, the lead-in to perhaps one of their most famous and successful tracks, the title from the Eye in the Sky album?

The second of these is next, with “Nucleus” a short, three-and-a-half minute piece that comes in on what sounds like NASA chatter and then floats on a big spacey atmospheric synth with no percussion; quite ELO in a way. Very celestial sounding, with some soft drumming making its way in on a faster rhythm than the main melody, a few little piano notes sprinkled along the way like breadcrumbs, the spacey synth segueing perfectly into the standout, and the third and final ballad, the beautiful and moving “Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)”, with some fine pedal steel from B.J. Cole and exquisite rippling and chiming keys. A song of looking back, realising some opportunities have gone but moving forward anyway, it's one of my favourite APP songs, full stop. Vocals are taken by Jack Harris, his only contribution to the album though he would resurface for next year's Pyramid.

Parsons then pulls the very unusual trick of finishing the album with not one, but two instrumentals. “Total Eclipse”, the only track on the album not written by he or Woolfson, is an eerie, minimalistic piece which indeed would be somewhat revisited on 1978's Pyramid in the track “In the Lap of the Gods”. It relies mostly on male and female vocal chorus, with what sounds like some sharp violin attack, and comes across almost as the incidental music to some low-budget horror movie. It is, to be blunt, weird. I don't particularly like it.

Ah, but then we close on “Genesis Ch1 v.32", which flows directly from “Total Eclipse” and ends the album triumphantly. There is a mystery here though (a “tale of mystery and imagination”, perhaps?) as an incredibly similar melody later shows up on Vangelis’s 1990 album The City, slightly (though not much) reworked and retitled “Procession”. This in itself is very odd, and something I remarked upon when reviewing The City a while back; Vangelis is certainly not known for covering other people's work - I don't think he ever has had a composition that wasn't original - and yet, the two songs are so similar it's virtually impossible to discount as coincidence. Perhaps the melody is based on some classical or other, older tune, yet this is referred to on neither artiste's album. A mystery, indeed, and one I've been trying to sort since I heard The City...

Despite this odd coincidence, if it is one, it's a great way to close the album and in general though I Robot doesn't consistently hit the highs I came to expect, and mostly got, from the Alan Parsons Project, it stands up quite well as their second album, and first of their own material, the debut being built around the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. A reasonable effort, and you could probably forgive them the few lower points on the album.

In conclusion then, a good album. Not a great album. But not a terrible one either. The good news was, there was much, much better to come.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Robot
2. I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You
3. Some Other Time
4. Breakdown
5. Don't Let it Show
6. The Voice
7. Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)
8. Nucleus
9. Total Eclipse
10. Genesis Ch. 1 v.32

Rating: 7.0/10

10-06-2021, 02:20 PM	#17 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	I Robot (1977) This is, to be fair, not one of my favourite albums from the Alan Parsons Project, but I came across this review in a forgotten folder of documents recently, and it seems to have been written for my original journal, way back in 2008. That's a long time ago, and hey, I wrote it, so it may as well see the light of day, even if it is four years later. On the whole, their albums have been pretty much consistently good over the years, but if I had to pick one of theirs I consider to be slightly sub-par, which would be the Alan Parsons Project record I listen to least, and perhaps like least, this would be it. I certainly don't hate it - don't hate any APP album, although it shares second place with The Time Machine as the one of theirs I'm most disappointed with - but it would be one of the last albums I would suggest to someone who was thinking of checking out their music. The second album released by the band, I Robot is not a bad album at all, I just think later releases were a lot better. But there’s a lot to be excited about on this album. Three really good ballads, as well as what became the trademark of the APP, the instrumental. The album starts and ends with one, though the closer, entitled “Genesis Ch 1 v.32” reveals something of a mystery, thirteen years later. For more, read on. The Alan Parsons Project has always been famous for utilising as many vocalists almost as tracks on their albums, and people who have sung on their albums include the likes of Lenny Zakatek, Colin Blunstone, Eric Woolfson, Chris Rainbow, David Paton and Gary Brooker, to mention just a few. It helped keep them fresh, so that each new song sounded different, and it was a formula that worked for the APP for over thirty years. The album opens on one of those instrumentals, which is in fact the title track. It's a slowburner, starting very quietly and coming in on rising synth and keys then choral vocals, which sound female but could of course be created on a synth float across the melody, pulling in that sound that was to become so familiar on APP albums, the sort of fast bassy run on the keys (or maybe it is a bass, I'm no expert) and the guitar riffs that became so identified with Parsons' work. It becomes quite boppy as many of the Alan Parsons Project's instrumentals do, or did, and the female choral voices are joined by male ones as the piece runs on. To Parsons' credit, it doesn't sound overly robotic, which is how you would probably have expected him to approach such a composition. That takes us to the first vocal track, and a singer not too often used by APP, with a much rougher, more rock-and-roll voice than the likes of Blunstone and Woolfson, Lenny Zakatek. He usually tends to feature, if at all, on only one track per album, and here he puts in a good performance on “I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You”, with an ominous piano opening which soon kicks into a real rocker (for the APP, that is: they were not exactly ever known for totally rockin' out), and his voice really suits the track. In fact, you can see seeds sown here that would bear fruit in later albums. This song is echoed two years later in “You Lie Down With Dogs” and also “I’d Rather Be a Man”, both from the excellent Eve album. The first of three ballads is next up, with the rather wistful and wonderful “Some Other Time” which, though it starts off all folky and pastoral and with Peter Straker on lead vocals gets a little rockier as it goes on. Straker would not feature on any other Parsons albums, and indeed many of the vocalists here - some of them legendary icons - would only sing on this album, before Alan established his stable of vocalists, among them Colin Blunstone, David Paton, Chris Rainbow and John Miles. “Breakdown” just doesn't do it for me. It's a mid-paced rocker but I feel it adds nothing to the album, and even with Hollies legend Allan Clarke on vocals I can't get into the song. One of the standouts comes in the form of the second ballad, the gentle “Don't Let it Show”, on vocals a man who would reprise his role on the next album but after that there would be very little heard about Dave Townsend. It's a sterling turn from him here though, and his voice is very heartfelt and emotional. The song itself rides on soft organ from Parsons, with the slow but sudden percussion really filling out the track. Future echoes, as it were, from APP's big hit single “Old and Wise”, in the lyric, when he sings ”If you smile when they mention my name/ They'll never own you/ And if you laugh when they say I'm to blame/ They'll never know you”. It also features what I'd term the “Parsons march”, which became so much a part of the APP sound, and indeed it's this that takes the track out to fade. Riding on a thick, funky bass and some seriously new-wave keyboards, “The Voice” is another song I could live without on this album, though to be fair they are in the minority. Another rock legend takes the mike to help Parsons out on this, and it's Cockney Rebel's Steve Harley. He does a great job, but can only work with what he's got, and I would put this in the realm of a bonus track or an unreleased one; I don't think it's good enough to be on the album. It says something that out of the ten tracks on this album, four of them are instrumentals, and each different. Not too many bands could get away with that, but the Alan Parsons Project always did, primarily because their instrumentals were just so damn good! Take a listen to “Pipeline” from Ammonia Avenue, or “Hyper-gamma Spaces” from Pyramid to see what I mean. And who could forget the jaunty yet haunting “Sirius”, the lead-in to perhaps one of their most famous and successful tracks, the title from the Eye in the Sky album? The second of these is next, with “Nucleus” a short, three-and-a-half minute piece that comes in on what sounds like NASA chatter and then floats on a big spacey atmospheric synth with no percussion; quite ELO in a way. Very celestial sounding, with some soft drumming making its way in on a faster rhythm than the main melody, a few little piano notes sprinkled along the way like breadcrumbs, the spacey synth segueing perfectly into the standout, and the third and final ballad, the beautiful and moving “Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)”, with some fine pedal steel from B.J. Cole and exquisite rippling and chiming keys. A song of looking back, realising some opportunities have gone but moving forward anyway, it's one of my favourite APP songs, full stop. Vocals are taken by Jack Harris, his only contribution to the album though he would resurface for next year's Pyramid. Parsons then pulls the very unusual trick of finishing the album with not one, but two instrumentals. “Total Eclipse”, the only track on the album not written by he or Woolfson, is an eerie, minimalistic piece which indeed would be somewhat revisited on 1978's Pyramid in the track “In the Lap of the Gods”. It relies mostly on male and female vocal chorus, with what sounds like some sharp violin attack, and comes across almost as the incidental music to some low-budget horror movie. It is, to be blunt, weird. I don't particularly like it. Ah, but then we close on “Genesis Ch1 v.32", which flows directly from “Total Eclipse” and ends the album triumphantly. There is a mystery here though (a “tale of mystery and imagination”, perhaps?) as an incredibly similar melody later shows up on Vangelis’s 1990 album The City, slightly (though not much) reworked and retitled “Procession”. This in itself is very odd, and something I remarked upon when reviewing The City a while back; Vangelis is certainly not known for covering other people's work - I don't think he ever has had a composition that wasn't original - and yet, the two songs are so similar it's virtually impossible to discount as coincidence. Perhaps the melody is based on some classical or other, older tune, yet this is referred to on neither artiste's album. A mystery, indeed, and one I've been trying to sort since I heard The City... Despite this odd coincidence, if it is one, it's a great way to close the album and in general though I Robot doesn't consistently hit the highs I came to expect, and mostly got, from the Alan Parsons Project, it stands up quite well as their second album, and first of their own material, the debut being built around the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. A reasonable effort, and you could probably forgive them the few lower points on the album. In conclusion then, a good album. Not a great album. But not a terrible one either. The good news was, there was much, much better to come. TRACK LISTING 1. I Robot 2. I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You 3. Some Other Time 4. Breakdown 5. Don't Let it Show 6. The Voice 7. Day After Day (The Show Must Go On) 8. Nucleus 9. Total Eclipse 10. Genesis Ch. 1 v.32 Rating: 7.0/10 __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018