emers-best

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Out of This World Sound at Loud Levels

More of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • Boasting KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout, this UK Island Pink Rim pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord‘s engineering work on this band’s albums
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Lucky Man” and “Take A Pebble” on this copy have Demo Disc quality sound like you won’t believe
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album… [which] showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly …there isn’t much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here.”

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. 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.

Near The Top Of The List

Without a doubt this record belongs in the Top Rock section. I’d even say it belongs in the Top Ten. It is one of the most dynamic and powerful rock recordings ever made. The organ on this album is wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The quiet interlude during “Take A Pebble” is about as quiet as any popular recording can ever be — the guitar is right at the noise floor. It’s amazing! (Which explains why so many domestic copies have groove damage. The record is just too hard to play for the average turntable. Hell, it’s hard to play with an audiophile turntable.)

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • An original UK Island pressing of this ELP Classic live album with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a seriously good Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Both of these sides are amazingly Tubey Magical and exceptionally spacious, with a massive bottom end and plenty of Rock and Roll (and classical) energy
  • Pictures at an Exhibition is yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume
  • “…it worked on several levels that allowed widely divergent audiences to embrace it — with the added stimulus of certain controlled substances, it teased the brain with its mix of melody and heavy rock, and for anyone with some musical knowledge, serious or casual, it was a sufficiently bold use of Mussorgsky’s original to stimulate hours of delightful listening.”

This British Island LP has real weight and heft, so when Emerson lays into the organ, it’ll rattle the walls. It has that big, fat, rich, smooth sound that we love here at Better Records. It’s warm and full, not thick and sludgy. It’s on the right end of the “tubey-transistory” spectrum.

Listen to how GIGANTIC the organ is that plays the fanfare opening of the work. Honestly, I have never heard a rock album with an organ sound that stretched from wall to wall like this one does. It sounds like it must be seventy five feet tall, too.

No, I take that back. The first ELP album has an organ that sounds about that big, but that’s a studio album. How did they manage to get that kind of organ sound in a live setting without actually having to build one inside the concert hall?

The domestic copies are a bad joke as you may have guessed.

You might think that you could just pick up any old Brit pressing to get this kind of sound, but that has not been our experience. Many of them are thick, dull, smeary, veiled, congested and/or just plain lifeless.

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Trilogy

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

More Prog Rock

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage UK Island pressing is doing just about everything right
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • An excellent recording that really shines on a good pressing like this, courtesy of the engineering brilliance of Eddie Offord
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “Every track on this album has been carefully thought, arranged, and performed to perfection…”

It’s not easy to find great copies of this album. This kind of prog rock demands big, bold sound, and not all copies have the size or low-end weight to pull it off. Keith Emerson’s organ needs to extend all the way down, or it just doesn’t work. Both sides here have a great bottom end, and some real texture and space up top.

“From The Beginning” has the kind of analog magic that made it a staple in practically every stereo store I walked into back in the ’70s.

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Tarkus

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • This original UK Island pressing was doing practically everything right, earning killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from top to bottom – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Our recent monster shootout produced this incredible sounding Brit (the only ones we offer), and it is stone guaranteed to rock your world
  • Eddie Offord‘s trademark Tubey Magic, energy, resolution, whomp factor and dynamics are all over this phenomenal recording
  • “Tarkus is a thoroughly written, focused piece of music. It remains among the Top Ten classic tracks in progressive rock history… [The album] is…a must-have.”

This killer copy features some of the more intense prog rock sound to hit our table in quite some time. This is a true Demo Disc LP, one of the most dynamic and powerful rock recordings ever made.

The organ captured here by Eddie Offord (of Yes engineering fame, we’re his biggest fans) and then transferred so well onto our Hot Stamper pressings will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. It’s big Bombastic Prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels it actually does rock your world.

Unlike most British pressings of the first album, the Brits here really ROCK, with greater dynamic contrasts and seriously prodigious bass, some of the best ever committed to vinyl. This music needs real whomp down below and lots of jump factor to work its magic. These Brits are super-low distortion, with an open, sweet sound, especially up top, but they still manage to convey the awesome power of the music, no mean feat.

Folks, This Is Why We Love Analog

This is ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest. You ain’t never gonna play a CD that sounds like this as long as you live. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, but digital media are evidently incapable of reproducing this kind of sound. There are nice sounding CDs in the world but there aren’t any that sound like this, not in my experience anyway. If you are thinking that someday a better digital system is going to come along in order to save you the trouble and expense of having to find and acquire these expensive original pressings, think again.

This is the kind of record that shows you what’s wrong with your BEST sounding CDs. (Let’s not even talk about the average one in your collection, or mine; the less said the better.) This is the kind of record that somebody might hear in a stereo store and realize that the digital road he’s been going down for so many years is nothing but a sonic dead end.

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer 

 More Prog Rock

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, we guarantee you’ve never ELP’s 1973 release sound remotely as good as it does on this superb import copy
  • This early British pressing is huge, spacious and rich, with prodigious amounts of bass, guaranteed to sound better than any other copy you’ve heard
  • Remarkable transparency – you hear into the huge, deep soundfield with almost nothing between you and the musicians
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The songs are… among their best work — the group’s arrangement of Sir Charles Hubert Parry’s setting of William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ manages to be reverent yet rocking, while Emerson’s adaptation of Alberto Ginastera’s music in ‘Tocatta’ outstrips even ‘The Barbarian’ and ‘Knife Edge’ from the first album as a distinctive and rewarding reinterpretation of a piece of serious music.”

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Emerson, Lake & Palmer on Cotillion

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

More Prog Rock

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout, this vintage Cotillion pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made
  • Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy (particularly on side one) – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord‘s engineering work on this band’s albums
  • ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Lucky Man” and “Take a Pebble” on this copy have Demo Disc Quality Sound like you won’t believe
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album… [which] showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly …there isn’t much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here.”

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.

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.

This Cotillion pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
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