Celebrate The Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer’s 50th Anniversary With A Vinyl Set Featuring Steven Wilson’s Remixes Of Five Classic Albums: The Yes Album, Fragile, Close To The Edge, Relayer And The Double Album, Tales From Topographic Oceans. YES mark their 50th anniversary this year and release YES: THE STEVEN WILSON REMIXES which spotlights five studio albums that helped secure the band’s recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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.
Fragile is the fourth studio album by the English progressive rock band Yes, released in November 1971 by Atlantic Records. After touring in support of their previous album, The Yes Album (1971), the band entered rehearsals in London in preparation for their next studio album. Early into the sessions, keyboardist Tony Kaye was fired over his reluctance to utilize more electronic synthesizers. He was quickly replaced with Rick Wakeman of the Strawbs, whose experience with various instruments helped expand the group's sound with the addition of the electric piano and harpsichord, Mellotron, and Minimoog synthesiser. Four tracks are group compositions; the remaining five are solo pieces written by each member. The cover is their first illustrated by Roger Dean, who would design many of their future logos, covers and stage sets.
Initially surfacing as a cassette in 1995, then reappearing later that year as a slightly revised and expanded CD, Flowermix, as the name indicates, consists mainly of remixes from the excellent Flowermouth album. Steve Wilson himself handles almost half the efforts, the rest given over to folks like David Kosten, later of Faultline; Os, aka Andrew Ostler, future partner of Tim Bowness in Darkroom; and Bowness himself. While some mixes concentrate on a dancefloor setting, others take a subtler approach or otherwise seem less concerned with raves as with their own internal logic.
Recorded live on the final night of the 1989 Anderson/Bruford/Wakeman/Howe tour, this two-CD set offers both oldies and improvements upon their new material. You'll probably find yourself listening only to the second CD, as the first CD largely consists of shaky solo medleys. Howe fares the best with delicate renditions of "Mood for a Day" and "The Clap." Anderson's guitar and vocal turn comes off like a coffeehouse gig - not bad, especially when he samples "Teakbois," but not riveting. Wakeman's "Merlin" and "Catherine Parr" solo trades speed for precision, and the crowd is unaccountably thrilled when he wrenches unimpressive blow-bottle sounds out of a keyboard. Bruford blows his solo yet again, just as in Yessongs; infatuated with electronic percussion, he produces a grating assortment of clanks and conks…
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.
Remastered Sound, Rarities, Two Previously Unreleased Concerts, And A New Dolby Atmos Mix By Steven Wilson.