Search - Lake & Palmer Emerson :: Brain Salad

ELP - BSS (Deluxe Edition)

J. Carney | 11/13/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"5 Stars for Brain Salad Surgery, of course. 1 Star for this remastering on the Deluxe Edition (SACD).



The midrange on this Deluxe Edition has been jacked up with EQ and it is compressed enough so that Lake's vocals now grate a bit, but most difficult to understand is how this sound was considered appropriate for Palmer's drums. When his first beat kicks in with hi-hat in tow around 1:30 into "Jerusalem," I think some folks will probably say to themselves: "You've got to be kidding." The hi-hat was already a rough listen on the Victory but here it has been turned into a metallic pinch. I don't personally think that these EQ moves were a success. The added compression is also really annoying. The whole signal sort of "pumps" as a result. Surely some will rave about more "detail" and "clarity," but in actual A/B comparisons with the old Victory CD, I found this to be utterly "tinny" with way too much added midrange EQ. And I already found the Victory a bit too bright. I still think that despite what I suspect were less than perfect source tapes, the original Atlantic CD mastered by Barry Diament is the best digital version of this album. Some might find it a bit "dull," but in comparison to what? I don't know, I find my ears tolerate 40 minutes of that sound just fine. Adding treble to recordings during remastering seems common in the digital realm, but sometimes over the course of an entire album this added treble can really become annoying. I wonder if people would find the original Atlantic CD "dull" if they cleaned their ears out with some warm sounding vinyl for a few days?



Let us keep in mind that the Victory remastering in 1993 by Joseph Palmaccio was apparently the first time this entire album had been remastered from master tapes. This same mastering was then used by Rhino (ignore the new mastering credit inside, it's just a mistake). Castle also used this mastering after first accidentally issuing a downmix from the Rhino DVD-A. Hence, you have the Victory CD, the Rhino and "corrected" Castle editions all featuring the same mastering by Mr. Palmaccio. The Japanese releases on JVC are not worth discussion (too compressed) other than the fact that they had snazzy packaging. The album was released on CD in Germany on Ariola/Manticore, but while some of the Manticore CDs are hunted by audiophiles (especially the first album as well as Tarkus, and to a certain extent Trilogy -- all of which I agree sound excellent), I didn't find the Manticore CD of BSS to be all that great. Too much treble. Incidentally, I suspect that all of the Japanese mini lp CDs by JVC originate from the Manticore/Ariola sources anyway, if not just the CDs themselves. If you are curious about different digital versions of the ELP catalog, I recommend trying to find those for comparison. The Japanese minis were (sonically) a complete joke and offer nothing of value to the dynamics or tonality of these albums.



But back to this new SACD: The no-noise is thankfully subtle, and will likely not be evident to any but the most obsessive audiophile, but some was surely applied. Consider that the hiss level between this and the Victory are very similar and yet this is compressed and had some added midrange (things that would increase hiss), so you figure it out. I can't stand the stuff and wish there was more reverence for the breath inherent in analog tape amongst many modern mastering engineers, because the sound that occurs when perfectly natural tape hiss is removed via computer is not an improvement to my ears, in fact, it is a major downgrade ... but that's another story.



The much bigger issue at hand will simply be if one thinks the Victory mastering needed to be even brighter and have compression added. If so, you'll like this sound. I found the new release vastly inferior to the Victory, and I still prefer Barry Diament's Atlantic CD mastering for the smoothest sound (particularly on Palmer's cymbals) of them all."

Actual review of the ELP SACD

Michael R. Huff | 10/29/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Today was my first listen of the SACD version of Brain Salad Surgery. There are two other discs included with this edition, neither of which are of interest to me. I also own the DVD-Audio version.



Why it gets 4 stars. It sounds as good, perhaps a tiny bit better than the dvd-audio version. Hard for me to do A-B comparisons with any accuracy, but I do have a solid system anchored by a denon DVD-3910, and the SACD is high quality. Really depends on your player and which format sounds better on it. If you do not have the dvd-audio version than this is a no brainer.



Why not 5 stars then? Well, because I was hoping for better dynamics on the first Karn Evil track (that always sounded a little flat to me on the DVD-Audio) and there is not much if any improvement there. Also, there is no bonus Lucky Man track on the SACD, which sounds quite good on the dvd-audio version. If you have the DVD-Audio verson, probably no need to get this one. If not, pick the SACD up for $25 or so from one of the venders here, and avoid paying the rediculous amount that the DVD-Audio version is going for."

Not cheap, but worth the investment

William M. Feagin | Salem, MA | 11/23/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is basically the ultimate version of Brain Salad Surgery, and while I probably wouldn't suggest this as a first-time purchase for any newbie to the works of ELP, it's nice for the dedicated fan. Here, you have the album in 3 forms--the original, remastered, on CD #1, which is the same remaster, as other reviewers have noted, as the one initially made for the now-defunct Victory Music label in 1993, the first time the ELP catalogue was properly remastered away from the first CD run with Atlantic (and I have memories of the CD version of The Best of Emerson, Lake & Palmer--a mix so low you had to crank the volume to 11 just to hear anything, which made "Still...You Turn Me On" sound as if the mics were placed near the back of a medium-large auditorium and the band recorded in that position).



On CD #2, you have the outtakes--the first attempt at "When the Apple Blossoms Bloom in the Windmills of Your Mind, I'll Be Your Valentine" (which didn't see official release until Works, Vol. 2, in late 1977) and the completely unreleased-until-now title cut, "Brain Salad Surgery," which has elements of all the tracks that did appear on the album (save perhaps "Benny the Bouncer"). In addition, first mixes of "Toccata" and "Karn Evil 9: 3rd Impression," and new stereo mixes of all the tracks, plus an excerpt from the New Musical Express interview flexidisc of the time. Worthy additions all, for the completist fan.



And CD #3? A hybrid SACD of the album; this is the 5.1 Surround Sound mix used on Rhino's DVD-A release of 1999 (Rhino R9-75980), but it is improved notably. My problem with DVD-As has been that, often, the mix is such that certain tracks seem to have been lowered inexplicably (a problem I noted especially with the DVD-As included in the Genesis remasters and in the DVD-A of Richard Thompson's Rumor and Sigh album--hey, EMI, could we have a hybrid SACD of that one, please?). This problem, thankfully, does not exist with the hybrid SACD, and this remix sounds better.



So if Deluxe Editions of this type are what you're looking for in your favourite classic rock albums, Brain Salad Surgery will be a worthy investment for you. (As of this writing, we're still waiting for a similar version of Black Sabbath's Paranoid, which was initially slated for release at the same time as the Deluxe BSS--Amazon's US site notes the release date as having been pushed back to 6 Jan. 2009, so we'll see what happens.)"