ACQUIRING THE TASTE

After the promising debut, it was on Gentle Giant to take a big step into the direction of something unique, unusual and a kind of acquired taste. The band mention in the booklet of "Acquiring The Taste":

"Acquiring the taste is the second phase of sensory pleasure. If you've gorged yourself on our first album, then relish the finer flavours (we hope) of this, our second offering.

It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular. We have recorded each composition with the one thought-that it should be unique, adventurous and fascinating. It has taken every shred of our combined musical and technical knowledge to achieve this.

From the outset we have abondoned all preconceived thoughts on blatant commercialism. Instead we hope to give you something far more substantial and fulfilling. All you need to do is sit back, and aquire the taste."

That is a idealistic statement, to show how Gentle Giant matured to this point. All that you'll find on this album are unique arrangements, bluesy outblasts and even anthemic ("Wreck") hard rock enthusiasm, in a strong progressional structure, on which the songs are based. The single songs sound all very different and are full of a fascinating atmosphere, which makes out the unique style of Gentle Giant on their adventurous observation "Acquiring The Taste", which was a clear big step up from their very good debut. I won't describe the songs in particular and take myself a big distance to rate them separately, because I see the whole record as one big journey, that YOU, the listener must take, over and over again, to really understand and love it.

Very big parts on here are experimental, but never went too far to lose the line, to understand the music. "Aquiring The Taste" is total unique and they never did something similar again on one of their later records. This record is musical genius - just read the horde of instruments the band plays on "Acquiring The Taste", what brilliant musicians they were! You need for sure an acquired taste to love all the music on here, but I will guarantee, that you will get addicted after some spins of "Acquiring The Taste" in your player and you understood the music on "Acquiring The Taste" as that what it is, a magical journey by GG, who were about to claim other, different dimensions on their followed records.

I want to give a whole-record rating for "Acquiring The Taste": 9.5/10 points 9.5/10 points = 93 % on MPV scale = 5/5 stars

point-system: 0 - 3 points = 1 star / 3.5 - 5.5 points = 2 stars / 6 - 7 points = 3 stars / 7.5 - 8.5 points = 4 stars / 9 - 10 points = 5 stars

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive music