{"id":9873,"date":"2016-01-11T05:30:13","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T05:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=9873"},"modified":"2016-01-07T13:49:48","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T13:49:48","slug":"album-review-gentle-giant-octopus-steven-wilson-remix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/01\/11\/album-review-gentle-giant-octopus-steven-wilson-remix\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Gentle Giant &#8212; Octopus (Steven Wilson Remix)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-9874\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/gentle_giant_octopus.jpg\" alt=\"gentle_giant_octopus\" width=\"280\" height=\"278\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/gentle_giant_octopus.jpg 280w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/gentle_giant_octopus-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/gentle_giant_octopus-65x65.jpg 65w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/>Progressive rockers <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?s=gentle+giant\"><b>Gentle Giant<\/b><\/a> released <i>Octopus<\/i>, their fourth album, in December 1972. Allowing that Gentle Giant&#8217;s music is nothing if not an acquired taste, <em>Octopus<\/em> is among their best work. The album got a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/03\/02\/album-review-gentle-giant-octopus\/\">long-awaited CD reissue<\/a> on the group&#8217;s own Alucard label in 2011. That release featured excellent sound along with a booklet containing brief modern-day comments from band members. It also featured a live track titled \u201cExcerpts from <i>Octopus<\/i>,\u201d from a July 3 1976 performance in New York. (The entirety of that concert has since been released as <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/05\/13\/hundred-word-reviews-for-may-2015-part-8\/\"><i>Live at the Bicentennial 1776-1976<\/i><\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float: left; padding: 10px; width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B014JDO9NC&amp;asins=B014JDO9NC&amp;linkId=EJEKR34F64ZXGNJU&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Now there&#8217;s an even newer <em>Octopus<\/em> reissue that aims to supplant the now-deleted 2011 reissue. What makes the new version (released late 2015) worthwhile is the involvement of <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/02\/interview-steven-wilson-of-porcupine-tree-do-what-you-love-and-the-fans-will-follow\/\"><b>Steven Wilson<\/b><\/a>. In addition to his important work as a solo artist, with <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/01\/27\/interview-steven-wilson-on-porcupine-tree-rarities\/\"><b>Porcupine Tree<\/b><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/03\/23\/album-review-blackfield-welcome-to-my-dna\/\"><b>Blackfield<\/b><\/a> and other projects, the modern-day progressive rock hero is enjoying well-deserved acclaim for his careful remixes of classic prog albums. He&#8217;s done work on many titles from the catalogs of <b>Caravan<\/b>, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/01\/24\/interview-steven-wilson-on-the-king-crimson-40th-anniversary-reissue-project\/\"><b>King Crimson<\/b><\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/05\/27\/album-review-jethro-tull-minstrel-in-the-gallery-40th-anniversary-la-grande-edition\/\"><b>Jethro Tull<\/b><\/a>, just to name a few. And his work on Gentle Giant&#8217;s <i>Octopus<\/i> is no less brilliant. The 2015 version includes two discs. The first is an audio CD featuring a Wilson remix of the &#8217;72 album, sourced from the master tapes, of course. The second disc is a Blu-ray, and features the entire album in three versions: 96\/24 Stereo LPCM, DTS 5.1, and a \u201cflat transfer\u201d of the original mix from more than forty years ago. What&#8217;s more, instrumental remixes of five <i>Octopus<\/i> tracks serve to highlight just how amazing a group of players Gentle Giant was in those days.<\/p>\n<p>An <b>Anil Prasad<\/b> liner note essay fills in the gaps in the story, and corrects the oversight of not including something like it on the 2011 reissue.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note<\/strong>: a fuller review of the music itself can be found in <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/03\/02\/album-review-gentle-giant-octopus\/\">my review of the 2011 reissue of <em>Octopus<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Progressive rockers Gentle Giant released Octopus, their fourth album, in December 1972. Allowing that Gentle Giant&#8217;s music is nothing if not an acquired taste, Octopus is among their best work. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,64,65],"tags":[893,2059],"class_list":["post-9873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prog","category-reissue","category-review","tag-gentle-giant","tag-steven-wilson","cat-56-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9873"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10100,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions\/10100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}