Inferno

by

Keith Emerson

Edit

When Dario Argento saw Emerson, Lake & Palmer live on stage, he was particularly impressed by Keith Emerson's performance and asked him to write the soundtrack for his new opus, "Inferno". The rest is musical history.

After many years without a CD release of this masterpiece of modern film music writing, the italian label Cinevox re-released it, and, as is policy at Cinevox's, added previously unreleased material, this time in form of a 10+ min "Outtakes Suite" - which finally includes some fine tunes previously dearly missed on the album.

For those who know the film: The impact of the soundtrack is not in the least bit inhibited by the lack of visual cues, sometimes even heightened, e.g. in Track #12, "Mark's discovery", which is an extremely beautifully structured/layered track that almost gets lost in the films vivid imagery. Afficionados of EL&P will be pleased to find "Taxi Ride (Rome)" (#3), which is a version of G. Verdi's "Va pensiero" (Nabucco) , absolutely on par with their other Classical Re-inventions. (Interestingly, the fact that it is a "cover version" isn't mentioned anywhere in the CD's booklet.) The sound quality of the recording is extremely good, so that the whole range of the orchestra Keith Emerson worked with can be wonderfully explored.

What more is to say? This is a must. Period.