Yes Fly From Here Review: It Soars!

I've had my CD for a week now and after listening to it many times (and having a spare moment in my work schedule) I'm prepared to write a review. It's good! I've enjoyed listening to the entire album clear through many times in the past week, which is more than can be said for Magnification (always wanted to skip one song), The Ladder (always wanted to skip a couple songs), or Open Your Eyes (always wanted to skip more than half of the songs!) So compared with the rest of the band's relatively recent catalog, it fares quite well.

It's got some very poppy moments, which we've come to expect from Yes in recent years. Fortunately they're mixed in with some quite interesting proggy bits and some nice dense instrumentation.

This album and recent events in the band's history have a lot of fans stirred up, but really—it's nothing we haven't seen before. After all, this is Yes! Line-up changes and behind-the-scenes drama are what it's all about. I became a fan of Yes at the time of Union (I was 18 at the time) so I got my fill of the whole YesWest/AWBH mess. I finally decided that I didn't care who played on what; I just liked music that didn't bore me by being overly repetitive or predictable. I'm happy to say that there is at least one song on EVERY Yes album that I really like.

So Jon got sick and the band found someone else to sing. Trevor Horn came along with some 30-year-old post-Drama and Buggles material that he wanted to get recorded and brought Geoff Downes along with him. Deal with it. Musically, it's a good album.

Face it, these guys are OLD. This could be one of our last chances to hear some of our favorite musicians in the studio. Rather than moaning and groaning about "what should have been" (according to our own warped perceptions) we should be celebrating how wonderful it is that we've got an exceptional talent like Trevor Horn producing some incredibly talented Yesmen once again to create some beautiful music. And don't forget the marvelous artwork by Roger Dean.

Yes have posted a film-style video for one of the more pop-oriented moments from their new CD on Youtube. It's interesting to watch. To my knowledge, producer and ex-Yes man Trevor Horn is the only person associated with the band to make an appearance in the video; he's the guy with the cigar. The band does not appear; the music is used as the soundtrack for this mini-film.

Here's the video!



In other news, Rick Wakeman, Trevor Rabin, and Jon Anderson are reportedly working together on a new project. There was even a rumor that Bill Bruford had been invited to join.  This will be interesting, I wonder what they'll call themselves; ABW...R? I am excited to hear what they come up with.

National Anthem by Enchant's Ted Leonard

Happy Independence Day in the USA! Ted Leonard of the band Enchant performed a wonderful, straight-forward rendition of our national anthem at a ball game a few years ago. One of the better performances of the song that I've heard. Have a listen and enjoy your 4th.



And so you can see him in his band context, here is an Enchant live performance video.

Aaron Meyer: Portland-area rock violinist

Here in Tualatin, Oregon we've got a nice summer "Concerts in the Commons" series of free outdoor concerts with a wide variety of music. As I reviewed this year's schedule I was pleasantly surprised to see a "Rock Violinist" listed! Intrigued, I checked out the artist's website.

Aaron Meyer is a talented musician with great stage presence, and he's put together a great band. His website has several videos, and YouTube has quite a few more. I'm really looking forward to the concert this summer!

First video I'll share is a promo clip from a video CD he released recently that features the band playing along with their studio recording--so you can hear some overdubbed parts that aren't actually being played, and there is no audience, but the camera work is really good:


Then a couple clips from an older live concert, where the sound and camera isn't as clean but it's a genuine live performance with audience:

New Yes Album: Fly From Here

New Yes album will be released in less than a month. It's available for pre-order now, with official release date of July 12. The band has released some clips, and some of them sound quite promising! This is the second album in the band's history to not feature Jon Anderson as the lead singer. Benoit David has a great voice in comparable range and in some parts sounds quite a bit like Jon. The music reminds me a lot of the Drama album, which I guess is no accident seeing as Trevor Horn is at the helm again in the producer's seat. Fellow ex-Buggle/YesMan Jeff Downes joined the line-up in time for this summer's tour, but to my knowledge he doesn't appear on the album; in the studio keys were handled by Oliver Wakeman (yes, Rick's son).

And they've released the first single! Yes, an actual single relased by the band. Imagine that. Pretty cool. Here's an exclusive stream from Rolling Stone:

Click here to listen to Yes' "We Can Fly"

Here are some other nice clips from the album:

Life On A Film Set by yestheband

Fly From Here part 3 - Madman at the Screens (Preview Snippet) by yestheband

Fly From Here part 5 - We Can Fly (Reprise) by yestheband

***UPDATE: I just found the track listing and credits for the new album on wikipedia, and it looks like Trevor Horn and Jeff Downes in fact did participate quite a bit on this album, with writing credits for a good portion of the music. Sounds like Drama, indeed!

Barock Project: Rock in Theater COMPLETE! (almost) 1.5 hour playlist of Live Concert

OK, I know i just wrote a post about these guys a few days ago, but they've uploaded more videos! This time it's footage from their yet-to-be released Live DVD featuring a string quartet! I first heard "Un Altro Mundo" from this concert a couple years ago and it became an immediate favorite. Unfortunately the band has still not released this amazing concert DVD.

However, they now have most of the music from that performance on YouTube! It features many of their own compositions as well as music by ELP, Bartok(arr.ELP), Corelli(arr. New Trolls) and Aires Tango. I couldn't find a playlist for the concert, so I've arranged the videos into an order that made sense to me. Here is the entire concert, 14 videos, about an hour and a half of great music.

And yes, I loved watching and listening to it so much that I really did stay up to 1:20AM. I think everybody should get a chance to watch this amazing concert! And now's your chance:



See my other posts concerning Barock Project

Singring and the Glass Guitar! Pure Utopia

I absolutely love this piece by Todd Rundgren's Utopia. A cheesy story. Goofy 70s costumes. What's not to love? Oh, and did I mention amazing musicianship?

The story is about Singring, the spirit of peace and happiness, being trapped in a glass guitar and locked way, with 4 keys scattered to the ends of the earth, with 4 heroes (the 4 band members) sent out to find them and bring happiness back to the land. The best thing about this piece is each of the band members gets their own section to sing lead (how many bands could do that?) and then play an extended solo portraying their quest to retrieve their key. Then they finally return with their keys, unlock the chest, and smash the glass guitar (apparently in many of their concerts they had a guitar made out of ice that they would literally smash) and free Singring.

So here it is, an old video from 1977, complete with less than ideal sound quality, synch problems, and video glitches: Singring and the Glass Guitar, spread over 3 YouTube video clips. Sit back and watch the adventure unfold!




And if that wasn't enough, here is a live recording of my favorite Utopia track. Just listen to those harmonies--and they're playing pretty complex parts at the same time. Pretty amazing. Not the best sound or video quality, so check out the studio recording if you want to hear it a lot cleaner.

Barock Project: 3 Songs from Rebus on Youtube!

If you're following the blog you might start to notice that one of my favorite new bands is the Italian band Barock Project. They just posted 3 new videos on YouTube! They're video montages using 3 different songs from their Rebus album as the soundtracks. While some of the video footage might be a bit distracting from the music, it's still a great chance to hear some more of the album if you don't yet own it. Chances are you'll want to get it once you've heard enough of them!



See my other post concerning Barock Project