谢天笑x.t.x:冷血动物 谢天笑

The Yes Album is the third studio album by the English progressive rock band Yes, released on 19 February 1971 by Atlantic Records. It is their first album with guitarist Steve Howe, who replaced Peter Banks in 1970, and their last in the 1970s to feature keyboardist Tony Kaye. The album was the first by the group not to feature any cover versions of songs. The band spent mid-1970 writing and rehearsing new material at a farmhouse at Romansleigh, Devon, and the new songs were recorded at Advision Studios in London in the autumn.

Morrocan Roll is not a step toward the rock & roll side of the fusion equation, but rather an experiment with Eastern sounds and softer textures that trades in the thunderstorms of their debut for rhythmically rich siroccos. Expanded to a quintet with the addition of percussionist Morris Pert, Brand X balances their arrangements with more equanimity, resulting in a subdued sound that is mesmerizing rather than arresting. The songs are written by individual members (their debut credited the band), but this doesn't yield the results you might expect: while Percy Jones' "Orbits" is essentially a showcase for the fretless bass, Lumley's "Disco Suicide" shares more with Frank Zappa than the artist's typically dreamy tones, and it's Phil Collins' "Why Should I Lend You Mine" that sounds most like the work of Lumley…

Lest the momentum of Moroccan Roll and its relative chart success go to waste, Brand X released a stopgap solution with Livestock, featuring three recent live tracks and two stockpiled studio tracks that actually predate the Moroccan Roll sessions by two months. As might be expected, it's not their most enduring work, although the inclusion of three new originals and the clean recording obtained from the Hammersmith Odeon and Marquee Club performances produce respectable results. Two of the three live tracks feature drummer Kenwood Dennard, who lends his superlative skins to the smooth fusion of "Nightmare Patrol" and a frenzied reading of the popular "Malaga Virgen." (Genesis had finished their tour that same year, so you can't begrudge Phil Collins the holiday)…

Is There Anything About? is the seventh album by British jazz fusion group Brand X. It is the last album to feature longstanding members Robin Lumley and Phil Collins. It was assembled from outtakes from the 1979 sessions. These sessions produced around twenty tracks which became Product (1979), Do They Hurt? (1980) and Is There Anything About? (1982). "Modern, Noisy and Effective" is the backing track to "Soho" with a new keyboard line overdubbed over the top of it. "A Longer April" is just an extended version of "April" from Product, with a bit of synth noise added in the middle. "TMIU-ATGA" is taken from an old cassette tape running in the studio when the band were improvising.

If Day at the Races was a sleek, streamlined album, its 1977 successor, News of the World, was its polar opposite, an explosion of styles that didn't seem to hold to any particular center. It's front-loaded with two of Queen's biggest anthems – the stomping, stadium-filling chant "We Will Rock You" and its triumphant companion, "We Are the Champions" – which are quickly followed by the ferocious "Sheer Heart Attack," a frenzied rocker that hits harder than anything on the album that shares its name (a remarkable achievement in itself). Three songs, three quick shifts in mood, but that's hardly the end of it.

A very cool, very unusual set from late 70s Finland - a keyboard-heavy batch of electronic pop that feels much more like UK work from a few years later - which might make T.T. Oksala way ahead of his time! T.T. plays a range of keyboards and guitar on the record, augmented by bass and drums - and most numbers have this tight, tuneful approach - but one that still allows for plenty of experimental elements too - almost a fusing of earlier prog with an 80s electro pop mode - with all the best bits still left in the middle! Lyrics are in English, which furthers the appeal of the set - and the whole thing almost feels like some of those obscure 80s records reissued recently by Medical Records.

Yes had fallen out of critical favor with Tales from Topographic Oceans, a two-record set of four songs that reviewers found indulgent. But they had not fallen out of the Top Ten, and so they had little incentive to curb their musical ambitiousness. Relayer, released 11 months after Tales, was a single-disc, three-song album, its music organized into suites that alternated abrasive, rhythmically dense instrumental sections featuring solos for the various instruments with delicate vocal and choral sections featuring poetic lyrics devoted to spiritual imagery. Such compositions seemed intended to provide an interesting musical landscape over which the listener might travel, and enough Yes fans did that to make Relayer a Top Ten, gold-selling hit, though critics continued to complain about the lack of concise, coherent song structures.

Going for the One is perhaps the most overlooked item in the Yes catalog. It marked Rick Wakeman's return to the band after a three-year absence, and also a return to shorter song forms after the experimentalism of Close to the Edge, Tales from Topographic Oceans, and Relayer. In many ways, this disc could be seen as the follow-up to Fragile. Its five tracks still retain mystical, abstract lyrical images, and the music is grand and melodic, the vocal harmonies perfectly balanced by the stinging guitar work of Steve Howe, Wakeman's keyboards, and the solid rhythms of Alan White and Chris Squire.