PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

From ELP's classic albums, I was missing this one. Finally saw it in a CD-shop in Cordoba back in Christmas of 2008, I was supposed to pick 3 albums as Christmas presents, one of them was this. I didn't have the chance to listen to it, there in Cordoba, so in the road back home, I gave it my first spin, with all the family as witnesses.

To tell you the truth, my father, a 70's Prog fan, started skipping the songs, I was not surprised he did that, if he hadn't, sooner or later I would have told him to do so. While the adaption was interesting at the beginning, it started to get annoying and very dense. The screeches of the synths, the dissonant Hammond, it just didn't fit a road trip at all, and it barely does fit any type of situation.

I was disappointed, and really regretted buying it. However, I didn't surrender that easily, still gave it some more spins back here in home, with proper speakers and proper dedication, still, ''annoyance''. The only track I could, and still, tolerate, was the Blues Variation, which is not even a part of the adaption of Mussorgsky. Blues Variation is, well, a blues song, just led by the heavy side of blues with a powerful organ and an awesome rhythm section, but it's quite boring as a composition: ELP didn't took the simple blues structure to the extreme as they did with many other songs, so you can't expect something really interesting, just some great powerful Hammond on a simple and predictable blues structure.

Pictures at an Exhibition does feature some groundbreaking Moog ideas and sounds, but this utterly fails to create some listenable and entertaining music.

If there's one over-blown and pretentious album ELP ever did, it's this one. A pitty, such a great cover-art, thrown away to the garbage. Only serious ELP fans should get this. 1 star.

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