I Robot is a blood banquet for automatons that is infused with the airy, romantic sentimentalism of pop music. The contradiction works well up to a point: it takes the coldbloodedness out of the synthesizer's greasy moan and adds a bit of humanism to it. But the final result is a tantara for the ultimate sensuality of the technocratic brat and his hardware.

Most scaramouchs of the synthesizer tend to become a bit overbearing simply because they lack an honest understanding of machine texturing — a kind of understanding that Eno, Lou Reed and Philip Glass have turned into exciting excursions into the soul of modern music. Not so with Parsons, perhaps because he arranges and produces the damn things instead of playing them.

In this enthusiastic combination of Cageian threnody, Ligeti-like choral megillahs and the futuristic insanities of Magma's "Ork Alarm," we roam from the shapeless chaos of "The Voice" and "Nucleus" to the pop glissades of "Some Other Time" and "Don't Let It Show." The most infectious track is "Day after Day (The Show Must Go On)," a spontaneous excursion into optimism and urban boredom.

What all this boils down to is that I Robot is a rose amid the concrete gray of the Metropolis. (RS 250)

JOE FERNBACHER