Free Hand
album by Gentle Giant
Free Hand is the seventh studio album by British progressive rock band Gentle Giant, released in 1975. It was Gentle Giant's first album with Chrysalis Records in the UK and internationally, except for the USA and Canada where it was released by Capitol Records. It is noted for having a less dissonant and more commercial sound than the previous album The Power and the Glory. It was their highest-charting album in the US, reaching number 48 on the Billboard 200.
Releases
In addition to the usual stereo version, the album was also mixed in 4-channel quadraphonic sound in 1976. The 4-channel mix was not used until 2012 when it finally appeared on DVD with encoding in multichannel LPCM, DTS and Dolby Digital surround sound formats.
A 1990 CD re-issue in the US by One Way Records used an alternate stereo mix. This version revealed some different details in the musical and vocal parts. However, this edition may have actually been a reduction or variation of the 4-channel mix.
Alucard Music/EMI Records re-released the CD in 2009, "from the original 1/4-inch tapes through 24bit 96k Hi-Resolution transfer."
On 25 June 2021 a new remix by musician and producer Steven Wilson was released in Dolby Atmos & 5.1 surround sound, accompanied by custom animated visuals for each track on Blu-ray.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1950780. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1976, 2012 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Free Hand” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.