And so the onward march of prog continues. Emerson is keyboardist Keith Emerson, Lake is singer and guitarist (and bassist) Greg Lake, formerly of King Crimson, and Palmer is drummer Carl Palmer. Emerson seems to take the lead on this album, with a lot of it very keyboard-led using Hammond, Moog, Minimoog, piano, and at one point a church organ.
Prog blends a lot of jazz and classical elements with rock, and here there are couple of showy-offy tracks where Emerson just noodles around with jazz (Infinite Space) or classical (The Only Way) which with its baroque stylings made me think of Spinal Tap again, and Nigel Tufnel’s “midway between Mozart and Bach, a sort of Mach piece” composition Lick My Love Pump. There are all manner of weird time signatures on the album, that would make even Dave Brubeck weep with inadequacy.
The showcase track is the Tarkus suite, taking up one side of the album and comprised of several movements that blend together better than these things sometimes do (linked by a recurring Hammond organ motif) but also feeling like different tracks bunged together. Again, Emerson’s keyboards are at the fore, doing all kinds of alternately funky, twiddly, and even jokey, riffs. There’s a story, suitably prog-rock weird, concerning the armadillo-tank creature Tarkus from the cover, and his battle with various creatures, culminating in a loss against a manticore, but it’s also about the futility of war, ultimately leading to nothing but desolation. It’s all utterly nuts, but I rather liked it.
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