ACQUIRING THE TASTE

This is a Gentle Giant for those who have a keen ear or open mind to experimentation. There's a feeling of ''uncertainty'' in the compositions; many times, it's hard to guess where a song is going like on ''The Moon is Down'' but it's well worth sitting through to get to the good meaty parts.

It's an album that you really need to have listened to it in order to understand how it works. If anything, Gentle Giant know how to use dynamics to lull the listener into a false sense of security. Take the middle of ''Pantagruel's Nativity''; it goes into a soft, tranquil thing after the first main idea, then the guitars and drums explode without really giving a warning. Maybe that other prog bands do this too, but Gentle Giant knows how to keep a theme going properly so that these sudden transitions are effective.

There's plenty of atypical music here from the plinky ''Black Cat'' to the sea shanty of ''Wreck''. Even a song like ''Plain Truth'', one that sounds like a plain country-rocker, has its offbeat moment in a wah-fed violin solo at the beginning and end. Only ''The House, the Street, the Room'' doesn't do anything for me. It's a cerebral album that's well worth the bashing at.