Gentle Giant - Octopus

This fourth album by the Giant is the first without any real flaws. It brims with creativity, unexpected textures and diversity. The playing is as dexterous as you can get it, but never to any detriment to the music's expression. The many styles they have incorporated with varying results on previous albums suddenly all seem to grow logically from each other. There is renaissance, bone-dry hard-rock, a lot of polyphony and those nearly incredible 4-part vocal parts that challenge the ear. They play an avalanche of non-rock instruments as well: all strings and woodwinds are played by the band as well as marimba, various recorders and vibraphone.
This may not be an easy music to get into, but is one of Britain's best prog albums of the early seventies (an era with ample competition!)