One of my favourite Yes records, and I don't care what anyone says — I still like it, 29 years after I first heard it. I think originally I taped a copy off someone else (Skander?) at school. I liked it so much I had to get the record. And what a lovely mid-seventies package it is. Yes album covers are almost all dreadful, but if you don't look too closely at this one, you can't see the silly warrior dudes on horseback and it takes on a pleasingly abstract quality, almost minimalist. Almost acceptable, if you squint from a distance. Good thick gatefold sleeve, with just a pic of the band sitting around cross-legged on the grass and a fantasy poem from someone I assumed was an esoteric guru but turns out to be a kind of assistant to Roger Dean.
The seventies prog template of having just one meisterwerk on Side 1 and two or three short(er) tracks on Side 2 rarely worked well, but this may be the best example. I've gone on about Side 1's The Gates of Delirium before. Side 2 has complementary pleasures. Sound Chaser is pretty hardcore. Remember this was the album that led me to The Mahavishnu Orchestra. All its wiggly skronky bits take a bit of getting used to. When I was 16 I had a fair bit of time and not many records, so I got to know the skronky bits pretty well. At first I liked the bits where they resolve into something more accessible, as in the "and to know that tempo will continue / lost in trance of dances / as rhythm takes another turn". But in time I got into the messy business that led up to the resolution, especially Steve Howe's angular guitar lines. For much of the album it seems like everyone's playing at once — itself a welcome change from the Yes norm where it seemed each band member took it in turns to show off their virtuosity. Then everyone but Steve — and occasionally Alan with a roll on the timpani — drops out for a bit, and this time it's not like showing off, because it's so integral to the development of the piece.
To Be Over is a different throw of the I Ching altogether. Full of space and breeze where Sound Chaser is claustrophobic and suffocating. Fantastically loose and lyrical intro, including something that sounds like (and may be) a sitar. They tried to recreate this feeling, I think, on one of the tracks of 90125, and found they couldn't. When Jon's vocal comes in, "We go sailing / Down the calming stream" I always thought, in 1981, of this little creek, where you can only sail if the tide is in and the wind is in the right direction (otherwise the channel is too narrow to tack on your way out):
As you can see, I still do.
In the course of listening to the remastered version with extra tracks on Spotify, I was force-fed this allmusic review, which was written from a very different vantage point from mine.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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