FREE HAND

Free hand is the seventh album from Gentle Giant and one of their best albums IMO. After The Power and the Glory which was the predecessor to Free Hand, Gentle Giant must have felt extremely inspired for Free Hand to come out as well as it did. I think The Power and the Glory is the weakest of the first six albums from Gentle Giant ( it´s not weak at all compared to other prog rock albums of course, only compared to the other five albums. I personally gave The Power and the Glory 4 stars) and I was afraid that their really good era was over. Free Hand fortunately proves me wrong. While still maintaining all of the charateristics of Gentle Giant which means a mix of hard rock, jazz/ fusion, classical chamber music, medieval music, avant garde and folk, Free Hand takes Gentle Giant one step further. Never on any of the previous albums have the music been this memorable yet still very complex. It´s a great achievement that only Gentle Giant could have done.

The music is as always pretty hard to describe as you can probably sense when reading my above description. Songs like Just The Same, Free Hand, Time To Kill and Mobile are all extremely well written progressive rock songs while On Reflection might be the finest polyrythmic vocal song Gentle Giant ever made. On Reflection is the song with most avant garde influences on the album, but it´s very memorable. His Last Voyage is a beautiful semi-ballad while the instrumental Talybont completes this beautiful and very powerful prog rock album.

The musicianship is outstanding. Every single musician plays beyond his abillities on Free Hand. Not only do Gentle Giant make beautiful and powerful music they are also mulitinstrumentalists and outstanding musicians every one of them.

The production is very good. absolutely the best sound quality Gentle Giant had achieved by then.

Free Hand is one of my favorite Gentle Giant albums, and also one of my favorite prog rock albums. It deserves all 5 stars for the musical genious put into the compositions and the interplay between the musicians. You will very seldom come across anything remotely like this. If you haven´t listened to this album yet, you better run out and buy yourself a copy, because this is pure genious.

NOTE: I have an edition with both Free Hand and Gentle Giants next album Interview on one CD which is of course a great treat. Two albums for the price of one. I would seek out this version if I were you.