Gentle Giant - Acquiring The Taste

An almost incredible leap upwards and forwards compared to the debut, this album still stands as one of the highlights of early British prog-rock. The liner notes say it all: ''we have recorded each composition with the one thought - that it should be unique, adventurous and fascinating.'' It is a rare event, that this is not only expressed in words on the cover, but actually hearable almost everywhere in the music. The stunning vocal parts reach a complexity previously unheard of in rock. The interplay is inventive and innovative: combinations of sounds that we have not heard before, still completely clear and misleadingly facile. You never hear the efforts that must have gone into this recording, everything sounds as if it's totally natural. In an interview of March 1998 in 20th century music magazine Ray Shulman states: ''I think Acquiring The Taste, our second record, was probably the purest in terms of making music. We just made music and it was never for any other reason. There were no business concerns because we weren't even known. I think that is when you make the purest music because you don't even have an audience.'' Although the last part of this statement maybe doubtful, it perfectly sums up from which angle the music was made. Some 35 years later this still pays off! There is some room to quibble anyway, of course. Some moog-explorations sound dated and the plain rock songs aren't that exciting. On the other hand, the first two tracks are nothing less than masterpieces of inventive rock and there is so much to explore inside the arrangements, that the album will easily outlast the even most diligent listener. Top-notch.