TRILOGY

TRILOGY may be less ambitious than BRAIN SALAD SURGERY, but it offers the listener music on a more human scale. It doesn't include any tunes as experimental as "Toccata" or as horribly overblown as "Jerusalem", but Greg Lake, ELP's vocalist, never sang more sweetly than here. It's a pleasure to hear his sensitive contributions to "The Great Enigma", "Trilogy" and "From the Beginning", although heaven may know what he meant when he wrote things like: "I ruled all of the earth, witnessed my birth, cried at the death a of man" etc...

The main feature which distinguishes TRILOGY from its predecessors is the fact Keith Emerson has finally discovered synths - in a big way. With the help of Lake's confident bass and Palmer's virtuoso drumming, he uses the dozens of new colours at his disposal to create music that's almost symphonic in scope. The most impressive example of his orchestrating powers is "Abbadon's Bolero", which sounds more mechanical than Ravel's well-known composition, and less seductive, but which is nevertheless a triumph.

At the same time, Emerson remained as impressive as ever on hammond organ and grand piano. The fugue he inserts into "The Great Enigma" sounds more virtuosic than anything Tony Banks or Rick Wakeman ever wrote or performed. His organ solo on "Living Sin" is a dirty, living, breathing thing - the kind of piece only Emerson could pull off. I even enjoy Emerson's 'country and western' leanings on "The Sheriff", and I feel it was a masterstroke to have them followed by Aaron Copland's "Hoedown", which gets a performance that really is more flexible and exciting than the original orchestral version.

TRILOGY may not be one of prog's mature masterpieces, but it's excellent fun from start to finish.