Artist: Gryphon: mp3 download
Genre(s):
Rock
Rock: Progressive
Discography:
Raindance
Year: 1997
Tracks: 9
Treason
Year: 1977
Tracks: 7
Red Queen To The Gryphon Three
Year: 1974
Tracks: 4
Midnight Mushrumps
Year: 1974
Tracks: 6
Gryphon
Year: 1973
Tracks: 11
Gryphon was one of the more than than unusual of the folk-rock groups to come proscribed of England in the seventies, mostly because they didn't trammel their musical genre-melding to folk-rock. Spawned at the Royal College of Music, they started out making a nominate for themselves in folk-rock, simply their graeco-Roman education and their approach to composing, recording, and performance currently took them into the practically bigger field of progressive rock candy, and eventually had them playing gigs in front of arena-size audiences. Richard Harvey (winds, mandolin, keyboards), who'd been playing music since age iV, crossed paths with Brian Gulland (winds, bassoon, keyboards, vocals) -- Harvey had a growth interest in traditional sept music and had previously played with an ensemble called Musica Reservata, import Gulland had lately begun delving into Renaissance and medieval church music. Together with guitarist Graeme Taylor, an sometime protagonist of Harvey's, they began working as a triad, playing a brand of what power c. H. Best be called antiquated folks music on instruments that were decidedly pre-20th century in either origin or sound. This early three most resembled a scotch between Pentangle and Amazing Blondel, just Gryphon's members were more good in their musicianship than Blondel's members, domain Health Organization were, to a outstanding extent, acquisition as they went along in their early years.
In 1972, the trey became a quartet with the addition of David Oberle as percussionist, and the following yr they were signed to Transatlantic Records, which was then unitary of the biggest of England's independent labels, with a special emphasis on kinfolk music in their lineup of artists (which included, not coincidentally, Pentangle). Their debut record album was interpreted in earnest enough to drive them gigs at places like the Victoria & Albert Museum -- where they lectured as well as concertized -- and former venues outside the usual kitchen range of folk music performances. Additionally, the group's formal musical grooming made it possible for them to accept a commission from Sir Peter Hall for a product of Shakespeare's The Tempest at the National Theatre. That commission, in turn, resulted in the creation of the group's first veridical thrust into progressive rock, with the album-side length "Midnight Mushrumps," which also became the title of their second LP, released in early 1974. The group was, by then, cultivating a dedicated hearing that motley open-minded folks enthusiasts and more good reform-minded sway aficionados, their repertory encompassing everything from mediaeval pose and dances to folk-based renditions of Beatles songs. Their recordings were a little more than guarded, more often than not comprising traditional pose, jigs, and dances extended and often expanded into suites running anywhere from seven to 25 minutes. By 1974, they'd also added bassist Philip Nestor, whose presence, conjugated with Oberle's switch from percussion to an actual tympan kit, toughened up their sound and protracted their scope still further -- only they were still among the selfsame few rock candy acts of this or whatsoever other period whose music was likely to feature a krumhorn or vertical flute cadenza. Their music could leap, in a individual measure, from a part of 15th century religious music crossways iV century geezerhood, from mediaeval record-keeper to galvanizing guitar, without skipping a thrum. Yet audiences were keeping up, and even the sway audience was pickings annotation -- Richard Harvey could play the recording machine flute glass at a pep pill that made Ian Anderson (rock's c. H. Best known flautist) front like he was working in dull motion.
Later in 1974, the mathematical group released what is commonly regarded as their magnum musical composition, Red Queen to Gryphon Three, which marked their headfirst plunge into progressive rock, eschewing vocals for the first time in their history and stretching out their playing on a quartette of extended tracks clocking in at ten proceedings or more each. For that album, they added a sixth phallus in organist Ernest Hart, whose keyboard prowess -- at least rivaling Yes' Tony Kaye, if non Rick Wakeman, for strikingness on a single instrumental role -- allowed the grouping to boom its melodic canvass onto a scale co-ordinated that of Genesis, King Crimson, et al. It's confutative how nearly Nestor or Hart were woven into the dance orchestra, however, as demonstrated by their want of composition or arrangement credits, among those pieces credited to Harvey, Gulland, Taylor, and Oberle. Red River Queen to Gryphon Three became their low album to have a U.S. passing which, unfortunately, was confined to the Bell Records label (not known as a bastion of progressive or folk-rock). It was too sufficiently impressive to receive Gryphon noticed by Steve Howe, the tether guitarist of Yes, wHO were then horseback riding high at the top of the prog rock/art john Rock field. The mathematical group afterwards appeared on his solo record album Beginnings, merely lots more important was their presence on Yes' 1975 hitch of North America, opening for the better-known banding, pick up thousands of new fans in the process, and tied getting peerless of their performances pass around over FM wireless in the United States.
What should get been their breakthrough, however, proven to be more of a footer to the history of the original band -- Graeme Taylor was the low to leave (replaced by Bob Foster), Malcolm Bennett replaced Philip Nestor for a myopic time (earlier Jonathan Davie took o'er the bassist spot), and Alex Baird came in on drums. Raindance (1975) restored their vocals and allowed Gryphon to return to more of a song-oriented outturn, just it was not intimately as inventive as their in the beginning LPs, and was the group's last album for iI age, amid the beginning of these personnel office changes. By the time their album Subversiveness (1977) appeared, they'd left Transatlantic in favour of Harvest Records, and had missed near of the family line and antique instrument attributes that had made them distinctive in the low billet.
Griffon had broken up by the last of the 1970s, just maintained sufficiency of an audience to catch their influence anthologized respective times on CD. In the years since their dissolution, Harvey has at peace on to a multi-tiered vocation in film medicine, classical chamber music, and forays into stone in collaborationism with Kate Bush, Elvis Costello, et al. Gulland appeared on records with Richard & Linda Thompson and Billy Squier, Graeme Taylor passed through the Albion Band and besides worked with Richard & Linda Thompson, and Oberle turned to the business side of rock candy journalism. Ironically, the group's sound on the foursome Transatlantic albums was so distinctive and accomplished that reissues of their work into the twenty-first c have ensured the addition of unexampled fans to their ranks of admirers, more than a generation after Gryphon disbanded.
|
