RED QUEEN TO GRYPHON THREE

All of Gryphon's 5 albums are worth buying, yet all are flawed to some extent - except this one. This is consistently excellent folk/mediaeval prog. 4 movements, loosely based on a game of chess, with a wide mixture of instruments and demonstrating musicianship of the highest order with lots of complex time changes and mood swings. Harvey's keyboards are comparable in quality to anyone in the genre and he THE acknowledged master of the recorder, Graeme Taylor is a superb acoustic guitarist and shows talent on the electric at times and Brian Gulland is a magnificent bassoon and krumhorn player. It's instrumental, so gone are the quirky vocals of the first album. They had toured with Yes around this time and, when I saw them, they blew Yes off stage. That is a measure of the band. This is their best album and deserves to be rated as a masterpiece and, if they were better known, it would be top 20 material. Buy it and enjoy it.