Am I a man or just a machine?" Robin Scott wonders on New York-London-Paris-Munich, and his mock-portentous tone spells out just how little the question is worth to him. Scott, the conceptual brains behind M–a group, by the way, that exists only as a concept–doesn't merely accept dehumanization, he revels in it. Among the new breed of English art rockers who've emerged over the past year to create a glibly mechanical style of avant-garde pop (a cerebral and ironic offshoot of the punk movement), Scott stands out for both his brazenness and ambition. "Pop Muzik," his first effort under the M rubric, was a phenomenal bluff: a tongue-in-cheeky anthem to pop as the new international language that managed to get played in punk clubs as well as discos, and pushed through largely on the strength of its own presumption. Yet, for all its calculation, the song has a breezy charm.

Stretched out over an entire album, however, such charm wears thin, and Scott's pose of supercilious amusement begins to seem intolerably smug. He's a facile, almost oppressively clever musician, able to homogenize almost any style–from Tin Pan Alley to Eurodisco – into his own brand of technological Muzak. But he can be very funny when his glibness fits the material: "Pop Muzik," for instance, or "Moderne Man/Satisfy Your Lust," a lounge-lizard epic so flamboyantly overdone that it cries out for a disco Busby Berkeley to choreograph it. Unfortunately, there isn't a shred of affection or feeling in Scott's parodies of pop genres. Instead, everything's a campy, intellectual joke, and the prevalent attitude is mainly one of snobbish self-delight. Like Devo's records, New York-London-Paris-Munich is a satire on soullessness that winds up sounding like propaganda for it.

You're a machine, Robin. Now go to sleep. (RS 311)

TOM CARSON