EMERSON LAKE & PALMER

Emerson Lake & Palmer

Symphonic Prog

4.24 | 2365 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Before many of the well known prog bands of the classic period had started to roll, these guys formed prog's most loved and hated supergroup.

Keith Emerson and Greg Lake met while playing the same gig with their respective bands. They decided they would do well together and recruited Carl Palmer. What resulted is an album of many strengths.

As was his way in The Nice, Keith arranged piano and orchestral works for rock. On ELP's debut, he transformed pieces by 20th century composers Bela Bartok and Leos Janacek into prog works. Bartok's Allegro Barbaro was dressed up into The Barbarian and Janacek's Sinfonietta became their song Knife Edge, in which Keith also inserts Bach in the middle. ELP also added lyrics to this, and interesting ones too!

Take a Pebble and Lucky Man are quite frequently referred to as Greg Lake Ballads. Well, Take a Pebble is absolutely fabulous and is probably Lake's best composition. It utilizes a lot of nice piano and guitar work, as well as Keith plucking the piano strings. Lucky Man is a nice song that Lake apparently wrote as a child. The moog solo is the best part. I've read that Keith improvised the solo and that they kept the first take. He said he felt it wasn't his best as he has and could've done much better. I agree with this but it is still good.

The other two are instrumentals. The Three Fates features Keith and if anyone ever needed proof of his ability (let's just pretend), this is all they would need. Tank is more or less Carl's song. I say this because he is most prominent. He even has a two minute drum solo. Keith also makes his presence known in the song with many great, flashy runs and synth parts.

Not many bands can get off to as great a start as ELP did. Perhaps it was their experience in previous bands that allowed them to do this. This is their most solid effort. There are no weaknesses. They do a fine job in composition/arrangement and still show their virtuosity in every track. ELP is my favorite ELP album and feel it is essential to every prog collection, like them or not.

White Shadow | 5/5 | 2007-12-27

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