Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album, made up of keyboard-dominated instrumentals ("The Barbarian," "Three Fates") and romantic ballads ("Lucky Man") showcasing all three members' very daunting talents.
This album, which reached the Top 20 in America and got to number four in England, showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly -- with the exception of a few moments on "Three Fates" and perhaps "Take a Pebble," there isn't much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here.
"Take a Pebble" might have passed for a Moody Blues track of the era but for the fact that none of the Moody Blues' keyboard men could solo like Keith Emerson.
Even here, in a relatively balanced collection of material, the album shows the beginnings of a dark, savage, imposingly gothic edge that had scarcely been seen before in so-called "art rock," mostly courtesy of Emerson's larger-than-life organ and synthesizer attacks.
Greg Lake's beautifully sung, deliberately archaic "Lucky Man" had a brush with success on FM radio, and Carl Palmer became the idol of many thousands of would-be drummers based on this one album (especially for "Three Fates" and "Tank"), but Emerson emerged as the overpowering talent here for much of the public.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Barbarian | Emerson, Lake & Palmer | Play | 04:34 | 0 MB | 31 MB |
| 2 | Take a Pebble | Emerson, Lake & Palmer | Play | 12:38 | 0 MB | 79 MB |
| 3 | Tank | Emerson, Lake & Palmer | Play | 06:53 | 0 MB | 50 MB |
| 4 | Lucky ManGreg Lake | Emerson, Lake & Palmer | Play | 04:40 | 0 MB | 34 MB |
| 5 | Knife Edge | Emerson, Lake & Palmer | Play | 05:10 | 0 MB | 37 MB |
| 6 | The Three Fates | Emerson, Lake & Palmer | Play | 07:47 | 0 MB | 52 MB |
| 0 mins | 0 MB | |||||
| 41 mins | 285 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Keith Emerson | Keyboards, Musician |
| 2 | Emerson, Lake & Palmer | Featured Artist, Primary Artist |
| 3 | Greg Lake | Composer, Musician, Producer, Vocals |
| 4 | Eddy Offord | Engineer |
| 5 | Carl Palmer | Drums |
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |
| CD Quality | FLAC | 16bit 44.1kHz | FLAC is an audio coding format which uses lossless compression. Digital audio in FLAC format has a smaller size and retains the same quality of the original Compact Disc (CD). |