I ROBOT

In the endless pursuit for more Prog in my teenage years, someone suggested the Alan Parsons Project to me, and after being charmed by their debut, the second album seemed a logical step forward to get acquainted with the artist. Unfortunately, the music turned out to be quite a few steps backwards. For me this album serves as an example for one of the most painful listening experiences ever to be associated with the progressive rock tag.

It starts decent enough though, the opening title track has a nice soft porn groove with funky guitars and a touch of Tangerine Dream majesty. It sounds a bit aged and cheesy now but there's a good composition at the core. It fades into the funk-disco-pop of I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You. APP couldn't have chosen a better track to prove he had given up on writing challenging or remarkable music entirely. It's a nice and catchy tune but it's so old and cliché, and unashamedly commercial.

Apart from the art-rocky track The Voice and a couple of average instrumentals the remainder of the album sounds simply horrible. The music never rises above sugar sweet pop ballads and cringe worthy funk-soul-disco. It's amazing how corny this material is and how badly it has aged. Did APP want to write a batch of songs to submit for the European Song Festival contest? They would sure have fit in perfectly. For people from across the Atlantic, the European Song Festival is the ultimate European Television freak show of bad taste, flat pop commercialism and mainstream balladry cheese.

I Robot is a dreadful album but I'll save it from the one star damnation because of its nice opening track and because the remainder of APP's discography is even worse. But I can't forgive this album for associating one of my favourite authors with such stale music. I'll spare you of reviews for the remainder of the APP discography as I don't have the courage to sit through any of those records ever again.