TARKUS

Very much lile 2112 by Rush, Tarkus is an album consiting of one side hit and one side miss. Title track is great, it's such fun to listen to and try to follow Keith Emerson's keyboard runs, and Carl Palmer does some really fascinating things with his drum kit as well. These two men make for an extremely interesting technical composition, where no two minutes sound the same and all parts are equally good. In short, a great journey from start to finish which might, however, take a few listens to fully digest.

To be honest, though, i'm not a big fan of ELP in the first place. In part because i find their find their music cold (maybe because of a lack of guitar, maybe because Keith Emerson is the poster-child of "showy playing"). Besides that, i find that most of their shorter songs are "fillers" (Benny the bouncer, the entire side 2 of Tarkus) and that their longer pieces tend to drag at some point (such as the middle section of KE9). Tarkus is a winner simply because it is furious enough, coming at you continiously for 20 minutes straight without ever dragging, to be interesting. Plus i find the lyrics, if not good, then at least entertaining, and there is a lot of different keyboard sounds from Keith going on. I also like the album art, very classic.

So if you're are a fan of this kind of cold, technical music that ELP stands for, you might find even the second side slightly interesting, and if you've never heard ELP, Tarkus is a good place to start as long as you don't expect much more than 20 minutes of good music.

As a fan of the reviews by Sean Trane, who tends to mix a "how good is this album in the sack?"-variable to his reviews, i would like to say that Tarkus is by far the WORST song to listen to while "getting it on". Especially the "Aquatarkus"-section is a big no.

Anyway, three stars for this classic album. Get it, listen to side one, and use the other for writing notes on.