12-05-2025 10:56am

50 YEARS

The Alan Parsons Project – I Robot (Super Deluxe Edition Boxset)

By Basil Francis, theprogessiveaspect.net

Before reading this review of an album you probably know inside out, you need to know where I’m coming from with it. The nature of a reissue review is heavily dependent on whether the author is familiar with it or not. As I was born in the 90s, most of my exploration into progressive music has been through reissues, and I’ve chronicled many of my experiences with them on The Progressive Aspect.

But you might expect me – a seasoned prog fan and reviewer – to be familiar with all the biggies, even if they could only tenuously be considered as prog; I’m here to let you know, I still have some very large gaps in my mental catalogue to fill.

The Alan Parsons Project represents one of those gaps. Back in my days of getting into 70s prog rock, the group came into my focus when I happened upon a 2-CD special edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the band’s debut album. In short, I was transfixed by the prog-lite, accessible tunes on the album’s first side and weirded out by the disjointed Fall of the House of Usher suite on Side 2. Every track on Side 1 was great, and I would often frequent that Side when looking for something less complex and singable.

However, it really didn’t quench my thirst for ‘prog’, and judging by the scores on ProgArchives, the duo of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson had, in fact, peaked with their first album. If it didn’t get better from here, what was the point in looking further? I’m fairly sure I did give I Robot a tentative FINISH READING HERE