GENTLE GIANT

The unstoppable wave of progressive rock that threatened to sweep away everything in the late sixties and early seventies led to a proliferation of bands, each one more complex than the last, incorporating the most diverse styles such as jazz, blues, psychedelia, folk, classical, and anything else that could be used to nurture proposals that surpassed the imaginable and also the unimaginable limits.

And it is in this context that one of the most reliable and paradoxically least recognised representatives of the mainstream of the time is Gentle Giant, a band born from the ashes of "Simon Dupree and the Big Sound", a psychedelic pop band formed by three multi-instrumentalist brothers, Derek, Phil and Ray Shelman. Heirs to their jazz trombonist father's passion for music, the academic brothers, accompanied by guitarist Gary Green, keyboardist Kerry Minnear and percussionist Martin Smith, released the band's eponymous debut album "Gentle Giant" in 1970. With a striking maturity given the youth of the band members (except for Phil, the rest of the band was in their early twenties), the spirit of the album moves through changes of mood and textures that mutate from gentle to demanding, from melodious to dysphonic, always with an extreme respect for the neatness of their instrumental execution.

The eclecticism and versatility of the British band's approach is reflected from the opening "Giant" with Minnear's introductory organs and mellotrons and a harmony that fluctuates between peaks and valleys sustained with mastery by Ray's bass and Smith's percussion, also in the beautiful acoustic opening of "Funny Ways", in the gloomy "Alucard" with Phil's persistent and dense saxophone riff and Minnear's disturbing moog, or in the fifties atmosphere of "Isn't It Quiet and Cold?" with Ray's violins and the cello of guest Clare Deniz.

But above all in the bluesy ambience of "Nothing at All", which glides through its initial, fragile acoustic notes to lead into an interlude dominated by Smith's agitated percussion in counterpoint with Minnear's experimental piano, very much akin to Crimsonian lucubrations, and in the blues rock of the demanding "Why Not" with the excellent guitar solo of the underrated Green, before "The Queen", the particular free orchestrated version of the anthem of England, concludes the very good presentation in society of Gentle Giant.

4 stars