Octopus is the fourth studio album by Britishprogressive rock band Gentle Giant, released in 1972. It was the band's last album which all the Shulman brothers involved together in the band, as the founding member Phil Shulman left the band after the release, and the first with new drummer John Weathers, who would remain with the band until their dissolution in 1980. Octopus remains a highly regarded example of the progressive rock genre and is generally considered to represent the start of the band's peak period.[citation needed]
Production
Octopus was allegedly named by Phil Shulman's wife Roberta[citation needed] as a pun on "octo opus" (eight musical works, reflecting the album's eight tracks).[3]
In 2004, Ray Shulman commented "(Octopus) was probably our best album, with the exception, perhaps of Acquiring the Taste. We started with the idea of writing a song about each member of the band. Having a concept in mind was a good starting point for writing. I don't know why, but despite the impact of The Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia, almost overnight concept albums were suddenly perceived as rather naff and pretentious".
Musical style and themes
The album maintained Gentle Giant's trademark of broad and challenging integrated styles. One of the highlights was the intricate madrigal-styled vocal workout "Knots". The album's lyrics are generally based on literature and philosophy: "The Advent of Panurge" is inspired by the books of Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais; "A Cry for Everyone" is inspired by the work and beliefs of the French writer Albert Camus, while the song "Knots" is inspired by the book Knots by the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing.
Releases
On 30 October 2015, a Steven Wilson remix was released on CD/Blu-ray via the band's Alucard label. Three tracks (1, 2 & 5)[4] could not be discretely remixed since one multi-track reel was missing. Instead, those three tracks were upmixed to 5.1 surround using the Penteo surround software. The remaining five tracks were remixed to 5.1 by Steven Wilson.[5]
Cover
The UK release by Vertigo featured art by Roger Dean. Dean's logo appears inside the lyrics booklet.
US and Canadian releases were released by Columbia and used a different cover by Charles White. Early versions of this cover were die-cut into a jar shape.
Later reviews about the album have remained positive. AllMusic have declared that Octopus is "an album that has withstood the test of time a lot better than anyone might have expected."[6]
In the Q & Mojo Classic Special Edition Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock, the album came #16 in its list of "40 Cosmic Rock Albums".[7] In The 100 Greatest Prog Albums Of All Time, by ProgMagazine, Octopus stands at number 65.[8]
In 2013, progressive death metal band Witherscape covered the track "A Cry for Everyone", and issued it for release on their The Inheritance album.[9]
The 2015 reissue of the album, mixed by Steven Wilson, entered the BBC Rock Chart at No. 34.[10]
Sivy, Robert Jacob (2016). Philippe Gonin (ed.). "Interwoven Patterns and Mutual Misunderstandings: Binding R.D. Laing's Psychology with Gentle Giant's Knots". Prog Rock in Europe: Overview of a persistent musical style. Dijon: Éditions universitaires de Dijon: 131–143. ISBN9782364411753. (Conference journal. Analysis of the song Knots)
^Octopus (booklet). Gentle Giant. Alucard Publishing Limited. 2015. ALUGG052. Tracks 1, 2 & 5 original mixes remastered by Steven Wilson. Tracks 1, 2 & 5 processed using Penteo stereo to surround upmixer software{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
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Smotroff, Mark (9 March 2016). "Eight Immersive Songs: Listening To Gentle Giant's Octopus In 5.1". Audiophile Review. Luxury Publishing Group. Retrieved 29 December 2018. Due to one master multi-track reel gone missing , Steven Wilson could only create a pure 5.1 mix for 5 of the 8 tracks on the album. The other three were extracted using Penteo's software which pulls 5.1 surround elements from the mixed two-channel stereo master tape.
