YES, I am excited about the new album

I've been a fan of Yes for many years, and have enjoyed their work in many different incarnations, including the (up to now) sole album not fronted by the legend that is Jon Anderson, the controversial "Drama" fronted by Buggles-man and producer extraordinaire Trevor Horn (as mentioned in an earlier post). But when they started touring more recently without Jon due to his health problems, using a singer from a Yes tribute act to take his place, I wasn't so impressed. Don't get me wrong, the sound is fine, his voice is very good, but it's the politics and lack of artistic input from Jon that upset me. As I understood the state of affairs before Jon's health problems, there were plans to write and record a new album with more or less my favourite line-up (Jon, Chris Squire, Steve Howe, Alan White and either Rick Wakeman himself or at least his son Oliver deputising for him as he now does live). Since the last results of such a collaboration were the brilliant studio tracks released on "The Keys to Ascension" (parts 1 and 2), also collected on the now deleted "Keystudio" CD, I was really looking forward to new music from the same group. Even without Rick, the last proper studio album with the other four, "Magnification", was excellent. I wanted more.

But then having replaced Jon live (which was questionable enough) it then emerged that Benoit David was also to replace him in the recording studio too, which was far worse as far as I was concerned. Jon's artistic input, I felt, was going to be sorely missed.

But then I read details recently (via http://www.yesworld.com/) that made me pause and reconsider. Trevor Horn (he of Drama fame) was going to be involved, as was his fellow Buggles/Drama keyboardist Geoff Downes (now in Asia), and the centrepiece was a track they'd played live on the Drama tour but never recorded, "We Can Fly From Here". Now, I don't really know the live version from the time, but the two parts of it released as extra tracks on the remastered CD of The Buggles "Adventures In Modern Recording" are highlights of that album for me, I've had them both on endless repeat on my media-player more than once. So to hear they've taken those demos and reworked the song into a twenty-minute four-part piece, well, that might send some non-prog fans screaming towards the exits but it makes me jump up and down with childish excitement. There's a certain amount of trepidation, will they ruin something I love, will it be self-indulgent rubbish, will Benoit's voice sound okay on record? But mostly there's hope - hope that once again Yes will pull a rabbit out of the hat and wow us all once more.

Of course, there's no saying that Jon will never record with them again - if this new CD (due out July 2011) isn't a success then there's more chance that pressure will be put on them to record as the "classic" line-up. Me, I'm going to ask for the moon on a stick - that the new "Fly From Here" is a great album, and that there's also more to come from Yes with Jon on board as well. Stranger things have happened with this band...

p.s. you can hear the Drama era Yes perform We Can Fly From Here live below - with some artistic visuals from a Youtube poster:



And this is The Buggles version: