Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now
If you’ve got the system to play this one loud enough, with the low end weight and energy it requires, you are in for a treat with Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s debut.
The organ that opens side two will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. This is bombastic prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels, it actually will rock your world.
To play this record right, you should have, at a minimum:
- Big dynamic speakers, and they should be pulled out well into the room to create a three-dimensional presentation, in this case of a live rock concert. If the speakers are too big for the room, or stuck in the corners, you haven’t got a chance with a recording as powerful as this one.
- A large room. (Our new studio has a 12 foot ceiling, a big help with a blockbuster recording such as this one.)
- Strong walls with no windows, and, if possible, a concrete floor to keep the bass from leaving the room.
- Seating for a single listener far from any boundary, especially the back wall (a common problem with small-ish rooms).
- Extensive room treatments to deal with the loud levels this music requires.
- Enough amplifier power driving speakers with big enough woofers to move all the air in the listening room with authority.
- And, finally, high quality electricity, a heavily tweaked front end and all the rest of the audio stuff we discuss endlessly on this blog.
Without all of these things, it’s hard for us to imagine anyone could hear this record sound the way the artists and engineers wanted it to. Playing a record like this in a small room at moderate levels practically guarantees that the listener will not be able to hear what makes the best copies of this album so special.
Our system evolved over the decades to play these kinds of records, primarily for two reasons:
- We love music and want to hear our favorite recordings sound their best, and
- With this much money on the line, we have to be right about the superior sound of the vintage Hot Stamper pressings we offer if we want to stay in business.
Side One
The Barbarian
Take a Pebble
Superb sound! Big, spacious and effortlessly alive. So dynamic too.
Lots of sibilance though, which means it’s a good test for cartridge and arm setup. Higher quality arms and cartridges — at least those cartridges that are not only of higher quality but are more neutral, two things that cannot be assumed to go together — should be able to track the sibilance with less grit and distortion.
The piano on the best copies is clear and solid. Compare any two or more copies for how much weight, clarity and freedom from smear on the individual notes can be heard on each.
The copy with the best sounding piano is probably going to be the copy with the best sound, period.
Eddie Offord engineered Fragile, and the song South Side of the Sky at the end of side one has an exceptionally well recorded piano as well. I am not aware of any engineer who has done a better job recording the piano for a rock or pop album. On Big Speakers at Loud Levels it is a powerful instrument indeed.
We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term).
We like them to be solidly weighted.
We like them to be free of smear, a quality that is rarely mentioned in the audiophile reviews we read.
Knife Edge
Again, some of the best sound to be found on any ELP album. We much prefer the tracks with vocals as opposed to the heavy keyboard ones. This is PROG at its best, right up there with Yes’s and King Crimson’s biggest and boldest musical statements. When it’s good, it’s REALLY GOOD. (Conversely, of course, when it’s bad, it’s pretty bad. Played Relayer lately?)
Side Two
The Three Fates: Clotho/Lachesis/Atropos
This is a very tough test for side two. It’s guaranteed to bring even the biggest and best systems to their knees. The organ is HUGE, so big and powerful it has a tendency to break up a bit in the loudest parts, either from groove damage or the inability of the cutting system to properly transfer the enormous amounts of bass that exist on the master tape onto the cutting acetate. You need plenty of amplifier cutting power and not every mastering chain had it.
Tank
Lucky Man
My favorite ELP track of them all (although Take a Pebble is right up there with it), sounding about as good as it gets. You need the right Cotillion copy for the ultimate sound; the better bass brings Palmer’s kick drum to life, not to mention the synthesizer solo.
UPDATE 2020
As of about 2020, we no longer believe that the Cotillions are superior to the Island pressings on this album, a subject we discuss in some detail here.
Listen also to the electric guitar solo in the left channel. On the best copies it really comes to life and rocks out. If it lays back in the mix you do not have a Hot Stamper for side two, I can assure you of that!
By the way, this track is cut a bit low compared to the two that precede it. It needs a click or two on the volume knob to work its magic.
Perfect for Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Further Reading