Emerson, Lake & Palmer - 1971 - Tarkus - 2025 - Cubase 14.
Midi to Wav : Cubase 14.
Mixing & Mastering : Samplitude Pro X7.
Audio & Video ; Magix Music Maker De Luxe 2025.
Tarkus", a 20-minute piece in seven parts written by Emerson, with Lake credited for the "Battlefield" section and contributions to "Stones of Years" and "Mass". It is a conceptual piece in which its narrative remains ambiguous and open to interpretation, but the artwork depicts the Tarkus character in the form of an armadillo-like tank who is born and loses a fight with a manticore, which concludes with the appearance of an aquatic version of Tarkus named Aquatarkus.
Keith Emerson (1944-2016) was very enthusiastic about the music of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera in the early 70s and saw that Tarkus would be his chance to compose music that would exploit some of the techniques used by those composers, such as irregular rhythms and atonality.
While Emerson was presenting his ideas for the ” Tarkus ” composition, which he had developed partly inspired by Carl Palmer’s (b.1950) 5/4 drum exercises, vocalist/bassist Greg Lake (1947-2016) unexpectedly announced that he was not at all interested in playing the music. It was too complicated, alien and un-melodic for Lake.
Lake declared that if Emerson wanted to do that kind of music, he should get other musicians to play it. Emerson was shocked by Lake’s reluctance, but he believed so strongly in the music he was making that he was prepared to break up the band to get on with his work. So Emerson saw through Lake’s bluff and responded with an ultimatum: either ELP would record ”Tarkus” or he would really change musicians. That would be the end of a supergroup that had started off promisingly.
Eventually Lake gave in, apparently partly due to pressure from his manager.