UNDER CONSTRUCTION

UNDER CONSTRUCTION is a nice double-CD which contains much unreleased material of GENTLE GIANT, many demos, some studio-outtakes and four old songs which were recorded in a pretty good quality, a song by drummer JOHN P. WEATHERS and a tune out of the CIVILIAN-era, but more about that later. It is a must for the real GENTLE GIANT fans and includes a detailed booklet with old photos and lots of informations about the band and the stuff you can find on this CD. But those who have not experienced this great band better should buy the 12 original albums. This CD is for fans only.

Disc 1 contains many unreleased tracks, most of them in good quality and two live recordings out of the IN'TERVIEW-era ("In'terview" and "Timing"). Especially four songs are pretty interesting. They were recorded in the late 60s:

"Freedoms Child" is a beautfiul tune with vionlin (some may find it a bit cheesy, I do not share their opinion) and was considered for GIANT FOR A DAY (though it is as already said before much older), "Hometown Special" with its hammond organ and its guitar solo in the middle section sounds most like the later GENTLE GIANT stuff, "Weekend Cowboy" is a beautiful tune that is sung by PHIL SHULMAN (and it is the only track in which the giants play the mouth organ, I think) and "Bringing Me Down" is heavily influenced by Soul music and contains a great organ solo in the middle section of the song..

Other mentionable songs on this CD are a "Nothing At All"-demo which is slightly a bit different to the album version that appeared on the band's self titled debut album, the "DVS Guitars" (Derek Victor Shulman guitars), fragments of the title "Robin Hood" which has actually never been finished, an ureleased Civilian track, "You Haven't A Chance" by JOHN P. WEATHERS and the both live tunes out of the IN'TERVIEW-era that I have already mentioned above.

Disc 2 contains mainly demos and stuido-outtakes and two intros for gigs, one from 1974 (a very cool track) and one from 1976 (in a rather bad quality). It was very interesting to hear songs like "Time To Kill" or "Empty City" as pure guitar-pieces or such tunes like "Free Hand" as pure keyboard tracks. The stuido excerpt of "So Sincere" is actually fascinating because it makes you having a clue how the guys worked in the studio (and it seems as if they had a lot of fun on this).

Alright, like I said right at the beginning: UNDER CONSTRUCTION is nothing for people who are not heavily into GENTLE GIANT's music (so I have to give it 3 stars), but for true fans this 2 CD set is easy 5 stars worth.