Red Queen to Gryphon Three

Red Queen to Gryphon Three is a four-movement instrumental concept album loosely based on a chess game from Through the Looking Glass, produced and arranged by Gryphon with Dave Grinsted as co-producer and engineer, and a cover by Dan Pearce. It was the first Gryphon album with electric guitars and added Mellotron, and the only one released in the US on a major label. Harvey plays keyboards, recorders and krumhorn, Gulland bassoon and krumhorn, Taylor guitars, Philip Nestor bass and Oberle drums, percussion and timpani, with Peter Redding on acoustic bass; the organ credit to Ernest Hart is disputed. Taylor says he was desperate to get an electric guitar in his hands, and that the legend has almost built it into something it never was. Oberle called it really the first expedition into progressive music, a symphonic structure with a theme through the album, aimed more at America.

It did not chart. Toppermost calls it a concept album around a game of chess, often cited as the band's best, with themes presented, developed and recapitulated in the style of classical music; Folking's Dai Jeffries wrote that it may stand as their most accomplished work, and Record Collector's Kingsley Abbott noted contrasting sections where rock statements are interspersed between more lyrical passages. Esoteric included it in the 2017 box Let the Electric Children Play, and Talking Elephant reissued it in 2007 and 2016.