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Gentle Giant - Acquiring the Taste CD (album) cover

ACQUIRING THE TASTE

Gentle Giant

 

Eclectic Prog

4.28 | 1745 ratings

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Uruk_hai
5 stars Review #94

When it comes to Gentle Giant it is really hard for me to be impartial and objective, that is because besides King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator (yes, the holy trinity of the Eclectic Prog sub-genre) they're absolutely my favorite Prog Rock band, so I'm sorry, but all the studio albums of the Giant from 1971 to 1975 are absolute masterpieces to me and this was the first of them.

The way in which these guys used to experiment with all kinds of rhythms is great, take "Pantagruel's Nativity" for example, the song comes and goes from very sweet notes to kind of an obscure Hard Rock and then switches to an almost jazzy middle section; the exquisite and homogenous mixture of bass, guitar, drums, sax, xylophone (to name a few of the instruments chosen in the song keeps telling us that Gentle Giant is not some random rock band, these guys wanted to do something really unique and they did it, and it that was not their intention they're even more incredible of what I think.

In "Edge of twilight" the atmosphere changes to a more relaxed but yet kind of obscure piece with very discrete percussions until a couple of minutes later where we can find a slightly more intense percussion section, kind of an early King Crimson song but less depressing. "The house, the street, the room" takes back the Rocky-style of the first song, in this piece the middle part is more oriented to Jazz due to the trumpet playing and then switches to a Hard Rock part in which you can almost touch the vibes of the powerful bass line.

"Acquiring the taste" is actually the shortest piece of the record, a short instrumental that I don't know why but in my head it really sounds like the kind of music that would sound on a Disney movie about a giant, this was a great way to close the A-side of the album. Opening the B-side of the album, the first song is "Wreck", the style of the giant remains valid in this piece that also plays with the Experimental Rock/Medieval music of the band, the vocal roles, and the flutes in the almost end of the song are a very exquisite touch; after another round to the song in which this medieval rock piece finds its end, we find another exquisite soft ballad.

"The Moon is down", brings back a little the melody of "Wreck" but in a more relaxed way, the instrumental jazzy middle part gives a vibe that the album is not very far from reaching its end, so glad we still have two more songs. When "Black cat" starts you already know what the sound of the album is about, the mood in this jazzy piece is almost a ballad. "Plain truth" is the last theme and it really has a vibe of closure song, once again the homogenous mixture of Jazz Rock and medieval music explodes into a very majestic piece that ends this album.

Absolutely indispensable, Gentle Giant is a favorite Prog band to a lot of people and that is mainly because they managed to be probably the most complex, experimental, and eclectic band of a music genre in which complex experimental and eclectic bands are the daily bread. This is not a great album, this is a GIANT album.

SONG RATING: Pantagruel's Nativity, 5 Edge of twilight, 5 The house, the street, the room, 5 Acquiring the taste, 4 Wreck, 5 The Moon is Down, 4 Black cat, 5 Plain Truth, 5

AVERAGE: 4.75

PERCENTAGE: 95

ALBUM RATING: 5 stars

I ranked this album #53 on my TOP 100 favorite Progressive Rock albums of all time.

Uruk_hai | 5/5 |

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