Jeff Berlin & Vox Humana Champion

To most listeners, Jeff Berlin is utterly unknown as a musician and composer; to progressive rock enthusiasts, however, Berlin is a god, ranked alongside Jaco Pastorious and Victor Wooten as one of the most exciting virtuoso bassists ever. Crossroads compiles his first two albums, Pump It! and Champion, into a single-disc "greatest hits" of sorts, although neither album had much impact beyond jazz-rock circles.

After the end of Yes, Downes and Horn resumed working on a second Buggles album, Adventures in Modern Recording, released in 1981. The same year, Downes founded Asia with fellow former Yes member Steve Howe, former King Crimson member John Wetton, and former Emerson, Lake & Palmer drummer Carl Palmer. The weak commercial performance of Adventures in Modern Recording, associated with Downes being busy with Asia and Horn wanting to be focusing on being a record producer, led to the disbanding of The Buggles. Yes subsequently reformed in 1983, without them, but with Horn producing.

Multi-national Rock outfit KYROS, formerly known as Synaesthesia — are set to return later this Fall with a release of their independently produced and engineered double album entitled Vox Humana, a follow-up to the critically acclaimed eponymous debut album, Synaesthesia, released in 2014 through GEP Records.

Indeed, bassist and educator Jeff Berlin is a modern era pioneer amid accolades that have piled high, spanning several decades via his astounding technique and contributions to progressive-rock, jazz fusion and modern mainstream jazz. Following up his jazz trio outing High Standards (2010, M.A.J. Records) also featuring bassist, pianist Richard Drexler, the core differentiator on Low Standards is that renowned drummer Mike Clark takes over the drum chair from Danny Gottlieb. Yet Berlin's game-plan is similar as Drexler uses the bass for a support role while toggling between piano duties. Nonetheless, the star of the show and lead soloist is Berlin, performing exclusively on electric bass.