Acquiring the Taste

Gentle Giant | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 20, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Fontana Island
• ASIN: B000001FW9
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,671 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Limited Edition Japanese pressing remastered in a miniature LP sleeve. This was the second album released from the prog rock band and was originally released in 1971. Vertigo. 2005. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "food for thought", August 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Acquiring the Taste (Audio CD)

I first listened to this album many years ago when my older sister gave me an original vinyl record. She had bought it on the recommendation of a friend but had no idea what to make of it. I listened to it a few times, thought it rather odd but interesting then filed it away and forgot about it for over twenty years. Some months ago while unpacking from a move, it fell out of a stack of records and I set up the turntable to give it a spin for old times sake. What a revelation! I've never heard a group that has tried such an ambitious and unique mix of styles and sounds. I suppose that my maturation has helped me to appreciate what I could not quite "get" as a teenager. It certainly does not contain any radio-friendly cuts, but if you have the time to sit and listen with an open mind you will be greatly rewarded. Especially "tasty" are "Black Cat", "Pantagruel's Nativity" and "The House, The Street". I have since listened to most of the later albums by the Giant but find that they pale in comparison. Could it have been the production by Tony Visconti that makes the difference? He seems to have been the "hidden hand" behind the seminal works of some other talented groups and artists in the early 70's. Whatever the secret, Aquiring the Taste is a remarkable achievement that has held up very well over the years.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A strange and beautiful work, August 30, 2000

By 

David J. Loftus (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Acquiring the Taste (Audio CD)

"It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular," read the 1971 liner notes to the second album by this unique British progressive rock band. At this remove, the statement sounds combative, even defensive, and time would show that Gentle Giant indeed would have liked to have won the kind of broad acclaim and sales enjoyed by such colleagues as Yes, Genesis, and Jethro Tull. Such, alas, was not to be, but their courage was impressive at the time, and over the course of a decade and nearly a dozen albums they would achieve their aesthetic goals and record some amazing and unforgettable work.

Sporting three lead vocalists at this point and playing an aggregate of more than 30 musical instruments in studio and on stage, Gentle Giant wedded classical to rock, madrigals to blues, and simple sweet ballads to near heavy metal and complex time signatures. Theirs was a music that demanded sophisticated musical taste and concentration of its listeners as much as emotion and an urge to dance.

Some Giant fans count this album among their favorites. I find it a bit too atmospheric and meandering on certain cuts, though never boring. "Edge of Twilight" is languid, dreamy, a little ominous, with an instrumental break that moves from delicate arpeggios and feathering of the keyboard to timpani and xylophone. "Black Cat" is another sly tune with electric guitar and keyboards quietly meowing under Kerry Minnear's understated vocal.

For the title cut Minnear plays a brief (1:36) and gentle Baroque theme on calliope-like keyboards that whistle and bomp in counterpoint.

By contrast, "Plain Truth" rocks hard as well as featuring bassist Ray Shulman's wonderful electrified blues violin on the intro and breaks, though at 7:36 it's a little long. "The House, The Street, The Room" similarly features brother Derek Shulman's shouting vocals and instrumental work that ranges from dramatic silent-movie piano quavering and gentle medieval bridges, to Gary Green's heavy blues electric guitar. During the instrumental section, harmony lines get chopped up and tossed around like confetti between xylophone, pizzicato violin, trumpet, harpsichord, guitar, recorder, and piano.

The band offers a sort of tragic sea chanty in "Wreck," with climbing vocal melodies over a hard beat, and rich, flowing instrumental bridges. "Pantagruel's Nativity," drawn from the same Rabelais literary classic that would inspire the superior "The Advent of Panurge" on the fourth album, is still one of the best cuts on this one: a wooh-ing Mellotron opens under Minnear's dreamiest vocals, Green's guitar punches in briefly, the keyboard tootles interesting harmonies like a flute or a bird under the second verse, Phil Shulman comments on trumpet, then there's a heavy blues break propelled by a buzzsaw guitar, pulling back to heavenly choral vocals in a minor key, then a vibes solo, and then....

If the album has a fault, it perhaps tries to do too much in many of the cuts, and the fusings aren't always organic. I give it three stars for the uninitiated, who might find it a bit too strange and challenging; listeners familiar with the above-named bands or, say, Caravan, Gryphon, or Nektar, would more likely give it four or more.

The band would take another album or two to get it right, and then for several years everything they did was brilliant.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Acquiring The Taste For Gentle Giant, August 30, 2003

By 

Alan Caylow (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Acquiring the Taste (Audio CD)

I love what Gentle Giant wrote on the inside of their second album, 1971's "Acquiring The Taste": "It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular." That pretty much sums up this daring British band, never achieving big commercial success in their 10 years together but not really caring either, as long as they made great music, and on their own terms. And they did. "Acquiring The Taste" is one of Gentle Giant's finest efforts, a superb prog-rock disc. My personal favorites: "Pantagruel's Nativity" is a stunning piece, with the band mixing classical, folk, rock, mellotron, and operatic vocals into a supreme musical blend. The title track is a brief but very-cool Moog synthesiser instrumental, courtesy of keyboardist Kerry Minnear. "Wreck" is a great rocker. "Black Cat" is one of my all-time favorite GG songs, a spooky little number with excellent string decorations throughout, and the 7 1/2 minute "Plain Truth" is another favorite Gentle Giant staple. The band's boldness, musicianship, and studio experimentation is mighty impressive on this album. "Acquiring The Taste" is another terrific prog-rock offering from the terrific Gentle Giant.