Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Brain Salad Surgery

I am also among those who for many years said: “Bravo. In fact, very good! But damn, what a heaviness! Was it really necessary to make a suite last 29 minutes and 38 seconds?? It doesn’t even fit on one side, come on! I understand that Emerson had a slightly oversized ego, but here we’re exaggerating…”

Then for some damn reason, some time ago, I put the vinyl back on. Something has changed in me, not in this album.

“Jerusalem” almost moves me, because the macabre charm of a religious hymn mixes perfectly with a voice like Lake's, warm, white yet here filtered as if through analog circuits, just like Palmer's epic percussion and Emerson's Moog Apollo. It all resonates like an epic and tragic hope that stands out “among these dark satanic mills.”

“Toccata” is disturbing, which from a typical prog reinterpretation of a classical piece transforms into a relentless ride into the crazy world, which at the time was peeking through, of electronics, demodé/amiga style sounds, which in their objective ugliness elevate the music and make it more powerful, disorienting. It works, damn!

The next song, the one I liked the most in my youth, now sounds almost like a polite and ethereal filler; ok, but it’s stuff with a class that 90% of today’s bands can only dream of composing. Strangely, I have a blast with “Benny The Bouncer,” which is really perfect in its mix of silliness, entertainment, instrumental class (read: Palmer's superlative brushes and Emerson's skewed and grotesque synth) and the delightful lyrics sung by a drunkard. Like listening to it for the first time, a great piece!

Brain Salad Surgery, in its vast power, in its meticulous rehearsing perfection, is in some ways a necessary evil. And in fact, “Karn Evil 9” is an exhausting, lively and funereal celebration of decadence, of the macabre show, of an evil science fiction that almost foresees Blade Runner and Matrix and makes us envy the brain of Pete Sinfield for all the drugged visions he was able to live and transpose into lyrics.

I'm not going to describe neither the structure nor the various movements nor even the lyrics, for that there are the liner notes or Wikipedia for the lazier ones. But take a moment to notice what the binary system composed of Emerson-Palmer is not: two supermassive black holes exchanging absurd waves of energy at the precise rhythm of the cosmic background radiation of Lake's bass. True that Emerson composed everything, enthusiastically creating his own Hammond-Synth back and forth, but what would all that abundance have been without a rhythm section able to keep up with him and set the pace to his egotistical-virtuosic bursts? What is the monstrous keyboard talent without the insane lyrical power of a biomechanical nightmare?

Hans Reudi Giger perfectly represents the cold anatomical charm of a record that seems to be the flaying and subsequent lab recomposition of a feeling, of a living being. It’s a bit like creating an android (gynoid, in this case) disturbing and sensual, a hetero hybrid between classicism, prog virtuosity, the near future that for us has already arrived and gone.

But there’s nothing old in Brain Salad Surgery; the modernity of anguish is always there. Death that scares only the flesh, because the machine can do without it; the morbid charm of an autopsy that discovers, under the perfection of beauty, the reality of circuits, filters, the synthetic.

Too much? Maybe yes; but I feel I (still) need these emotions. I feel that certain things have been done too well, too loved to be forgotten just because almost half a century has passed. I feel that what was the machine for them and is the digital for us, still generates charm, sensuality & anguish.

I feel I like remembering Lake, his way of producing and creating; I feel I like remembering Emerson’s love for classical music and his own, unparalleled skill. I feel Palmer shakes the brain and soul with his explosive creativity. I feel this record, despite everything, is actually as light as a wonderful silk brocade shroud. And it will be for, well, a long time… Until death & machine do us part.