The Advent of Panurge - Gentle Giant (1972)

Baroque counterpoint harmonies, medieval recorder passages, funk rhythms, hard-rock hooks – British experimentalists Gentle Giant mastered this bizarre formula on their fourth album, Octopus, which marked the end of one era for the band and the beginning of another. It was the swan-song for multi-instrumentalist Phil Shulman and the debut for drummer John Weathers, the grooviest percussionist in all of prog, and Giant leave no weird musical stone unturned (check the complex madrigal vocal parts of "Knots"). Still, their mad-scientist experiments were balanced by the raw rock majesty of classics like "The Advent of Panurge." "I think that this album was the culmination of what and where the band was headed into the rest of the decade," frontman Derek Shulman said in the LP reissue’s liner notes. R.R.

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