TRILOGY

TRILOGY may be less ambitious than BRAIN SALAD SURGERY, but it offers the listener music on a more human scale. While the album does not include any tunes as experimental as "Toccata" or as horribly overblown as "Jerusalem", Greg Lake, ELP's vocalist, never sang more sweetly. It's a pleasure to hear his sensitive contributions to "The Great Enigma", "Trilogy" and "From the Beginning", although heaven only knows what he meant when he wrote things like: "I ruled all of the earth, witnessed my birth, cried at the death a of man" etc...

The main feature which distinguishes TRILOGY from its predecessors is the fact that Keith Emerson finally discovered synths - in a big way. With the help of Lake's confident bass and Palmer's virtuoso drumming, he uses the dozens of new colours at his disposal to create music that's almost symphonic in scope. The most impressive example of his orchestrating powers is "Abbadon's Bolero", which sounds more mechanical than Ravel's familiar piece, and less seductive, but which is nevertheless a kind of triumph.

At the same time, Emerson remained impressive as ever on Hammond organ and grand piano. The fugue he inserts into "The Great Enigma" sounds more virtuosic than anything Tony Banks or Rick Wakeman ever wrote or played. His organ solo on "Living Sin" is a dirty, living, breathing thing - the kind of performance only Emerson could pull off. I even enjoy Emerson's 'country and western' leanings on "The Sheriff", and I feel it was a masterstroke to have them followed by Aaron Copland's "Hoedown", which gets a performance that really is more flexible and exciting than the original orchestral version.

TRILOGY may not be one of prog's mature masterpieces, but it's excellent fun from start to finish.