70 years ago today, prime minister Winston Churchill announced that the war had finally ended in Europe and victory was declared. To mark the anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, a service of remembrance takes place at the Cenotaph in London, observing a national two-minute silence at 3pm.
Alan Parsons delivered a detailed blueprint for his Project on their 1975 debut, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, but it was on its 1977 follow-up, I Robot, that the outfit reached its true potential. Borrowing not just its title but its concept from Isaac Asimov's classic sci-fi Robot trilogy, this album explores many of the philosophies regarding artificial intelligence – will it overtake man? What does it mean to be man? What responsibilities do mechanical beings have to their creators? And so on and so forth – with enough knotty intelligence to make it a seminal text of late-'70s geeks, and while it is also true that appreciating I Robot does require a love of either sci-fi or art rock, it is also true that sci-fi art rock never came any better than this.
Alan Parsons delivered a detailed blueprint for his Project on their 1975 debut, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, but it was on its 1977 follow-up, I Robot, that the outfit reached its true potential. Borrowing not just its title but concept from Isaac Asimov's classic sci-fi Robot trilogy, this album explores many of the philosophies regarding artificial intelligence – will it overtake man, what does it mean to be man, what responsibilities do mechanical beings have to their creators, and so on and so forth – with enough knotty intelligence to make it a seminal text of late-'70s geeks…