I ROBOT

This album has been with me for a better part of my life, ever since my dad bought a cassette of this back in 1984. While "Tales of Mystery & Imagination" features no synths, PARSONS' second album "I Robot" has since became his most synth-heavy album I have heard. Many of you are familiar with "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You" and "Breakdown" which radio stations still continue to play to this day, but there's some other great stuff as well. Like the title cut, which tends to be heavily electronic, with lots of great synths, as well as a cimbalom (Hungarian dulcimer) and kantele (Finnish zither) being used, courtesy of John Leach.

This album also premiers the vocals of Lenny Zakatek, as demonstrated on "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You". The largely acoustic "Some Other Time" is truly amazing, and definately overlooked, especially by radio programmers. "The Voice" has that nice repetitive bass line, great string synths, and a great funky solo in the middle. Then there's the ambient experiment "Nucleus" which then segues in to "Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)", which is by far the best ballad APP has ever done, in my opinion. Then it segues in to "Total Eclipse", which is orchestral conductor Andrew Powell's turn to shine. This piece is downright creepy, complete with sinister voices and equally sinister strings. Then the album closes with "Genesis Ch. 1 V.32" (a supposedly non-existent bible verse, as GENESIS is supposed to have only 31 verses, but don't quote me on that since I'm not too familiar with the bible), it's another heavily electronic instrumental cut that's very similar to the title track.

I don't think The ALAN PARSONS PROJECT ever created an album with the quality of "I Robot", to me, I think they started repeating the same thing over and over, making all the later albums sound the same (despite the changes of technology by the mid 1980s), so if you're not the biggest APP nut, like me, this is definately one of the albums you need.