{"product_id":"emerstarku_2605-1","title":"Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Tarkus - White Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis incredible copy features some of the more intense prog rock sound to hit our table in quite some time. This is a true Demo Disc LP, one of the most dynamic and powerful rock recordings ever made.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe organ captured here by Eddie Offord (of Yes engineering fame, we're his biggest fans) and then transferred so well onto our Hot Stamper pressings will rattle the foundation of your house if you're not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. It's big, bombastic Prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels it actually \u003ci\u003edoes\u003c\/i\u003e rock your world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike most British pressings of the first album, the Brits here really rock, with greater dynamic contrasts and seriously prodigious bass, some of the best ever committed to vinyl. This music needs real \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22WHOMP%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWHOMP\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e down below and lots of jump factor to work its magic. These Brits are super-low distortion, with an open, sweet sound, especially up top, but they still manage to convey the awesome power of the music, no mean feat.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eFolks, This Is Why We Love Analog\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is \u003ci\u003eanalog\u003c\/i\u003e at its Tubey Magical finest. You ain't never gonna play a CD that sounds like this as long as you live. I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but digital media are evidently incapable of reproducing this kind of sound. There are nice sounding CDs in the world but there aren't any that sound like this, not in my experience anyway. If you are thinking that someday a better digital system is going to come along in order to save you the trouble and expense of having to find and acquire these expensive original pressings, think again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the kind of record that shows you what's wrong with your best sounding CDs. (Let's not even talk about the average one in your collection, or mine; the less said the better.) This is the kind of record that somebody might hear in a stereo store and realize that the digital road he's been going down for so many years is nothing but a sonic dead end.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is that kind of record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of Tarkus Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe most Tubey Magic, without which you have \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%221971%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1971\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTransparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. \u003ci\u003ePlaying the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,\u003c\/i\u003e and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll but the better Brit pressings have a tendency to be a bit turgid and many of them lack the bottom end weight that music like this absolutely needs in order to work its magic. There are some good domestic copies -- not in a league with the best Brits at all -- but most of them have sub-generation sound that robs the instruments of their immediacy and texture (much the same way that Heavy Vinyl does, truth be told).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Emerson, Lake and Palmer Albums \u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEnergy\u003c\/strong\u003e for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen: \u003cstrong\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e. The vocals aren't \"back there\" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Sound\u003c\/strong\u003e comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen \u003cstrong\u003etransient information\u003c\/strong\u003e -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTight punchy bass\u003c\/strong\u003e -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNext: \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtend the top and bottom\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003ci\u003evoila\u003c\/i\u003e, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Emerson, Lake and Palmer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51813606949160,"sku":"emerstarku","price":599.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/emerstarku.jpg?v=1778610948","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/emerstarku_2605-1","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}