The Musical Box

Age and a global pandemic cannot wither them, as prog’s founding fathers notch up another landmark with album number 22.

Words: Chris Roberts Illustration: Kevin February

Edited by Dave Everley prog.reviews@futurenet.com

New spins…

It’s been a decade since Fly From Here soared to unexpected heights as Yes briefly reunited with Trevor Horn. And it’s seven years since their last studio album, Heaven & Earth, brought Jon Davison in on vocals and featured the late Chris Squire’s farewell. Their first of the 2020s – and their 22nd since they formed over half a century ago – was created in part in a very modern manner, with file sharing and online co-writes defying the barriers of lockdown. (Much water has passed under the bridge since Yes were decorating Morgan Studios as a farmyard with model cows and stacks of hay during the Tales From Topographic Oceans sessions.)

Produced by Steve Howe, this is the first Yes album where that power and responsibility has been given to one member since Trevor Rabin produced Talk in 1994. Whereas the normally hyperactive Roy Thomas Baker sounded restrained and muted on Heaven & Earth, Howe seems motivated, animated, keen to kick this one into life. It gets there more often than not, and while it’s not about to supplant any of the landmarks as your favourite Yes album, it’s a spirited attempt to roll back the years in search of thunder.

This line-up – Howe, Davison, Geoff Downes, Alan White and Billy Sherwood (striving manfully to fill Squire’s boots) – has been settled with the relay(er) baton since 2015. While in the parallel dimensions of Yesworld there will still be many censoriously sneering at the ensemble for not matching their own personal choice of team selection, there’s no denying that the five are in a content, creative place. Sketches for The Quest began in late 2019, with Howe and Davison driving, before Covid threw a spanner in all our works. Collaboration via the internet saved the momentum. Downes and Davison also wrote together, as did Davison and Sherwood. White was able to record in LA with Sherwood. Howe steered throughout. Downes has said that, as a fan of Tony Kaye, he used a lot of retro keyboard sounds, but The Quest doesn’t align itself with any one particular era of Yes. If it’s a little too smooth and clean for its own good in parts (especially on the ballads), the songs in general are much stronger than on Heaven & Earth and rather more blood pumps through its veins.

The Quest

INSIDEOUT

" It’s a spirited attempt to roll back the years in search of thunder. "

There’s a fair bit of pressure on The Ice Bridge, as the opening track. It stays steadfast and doesn’t crack. After an intro that leans uncomfortably close to Fanfare For The Common Man reimagined by Pearl & Dean, it hits its stride, Sherwood giving it ballast while Howe’s instantly recognisable flicks and tricks fly off like sparks. Davison’s themes are environmental; topical yet referencing the past and future. While he obviously still sounds like Jon Anderson – and is probably obliged to – he’s more confident than ever. And if you’re pining for Anderson’s brand of astralgibberish lyrics, the deployment of phrases like ‘exponential ancient overdrive’ will float your spaceship. This scene-setter packs plenty into its seven minutes, with dazzling solos from Howe and Downes ripping across the final third. It’d be too rich to claim it’s as exhilarating as the climax of Going For The One, but it’s a swashbuckling statement, showing there’s juice left in the tank.

Three Howe-led compositions follow, and find a pleasing plateau on which to let the band demonstrate their wares and flair. Dare To Know skips and hops gently before an orchestra drives it up a dimension. It isn’t symphonic, but it is simpatico. The midtempo Minus The Man relies on Davison’s sweetness and Howe’s flecks of guitar paint for elevation, while Leave Well Alone at first perhaps feels closer to Asia, with its 80s AOR keyboard stabs, than what readers might think of as Yes. Before its eight minutes are run, it’s sourced some space for Howe to flourish in.

The Western Edge is spacey and full of sighs, by accident or design the most evocative of Anderson-era Yes. Davison’s Future Memories has a melancholy folk feel, Music To My Ears is slightly bland lighters-aloft filler, and Downes/Davison’s A Living Island is inspired by Barbados. Don’t expect Typically Tropical though: it’s a green-positive paean to coral. Oh, and the planet. Its ending stretches for some grandeur with which to bring the album home. Except! There are three further tracks on a bonus disc. These fail to add anything. Sleeping Sister Soul is a tad spindly, and Mystery Tour an unnecessary beginners’ guide to The Beatles. Howe’s Damaged World lilts along for five minutes, barely registering. The first disc – the album proper – is where the good stuff lives.

And it is good stuff. Great? No. Yes at their most inspired, glorious level? No. But it’s a healthy improvement on their last offering. On studio album 22, they’ve caught flashes of the old magic. The quest goes on.

SEL BALAMIR

Swell ROCKOSMOS

Amplifier’s frontman takes his first solo dive.

Growing up in London, the young Sel Balamir would look forward to summer holidays; visits to his Turkish family, spent by the Mediterranean Sea where he always felt “at home”. Although Balamir’s life soon revolved around city-based recording and touring, given the chance to grab his own slice of oceanic action, he took it. So while the studio used for Amplifier’s progressive rock-based adventures was still in his old (other) stamping ground of Manchester Balamir and his family moved to a new home yards away from the sea on the Sussex coast. He’s now a frequent visitor to the waves, having found a passion for windsurfing.

It’s no surprise then that Balamir’s debut solo record hones in on this fascination. The subject’s seeped into past Amplifier work – abstractly with 2006 track Strange Seas Of Thought, directly with 2011 album The Octopus – but with the three tracks of Swell, he’s fully immersed.

In truth, Balamir had little choice in how to create Swell. Lockdown 2020 meant no face-to-face collaboration with his bandmates for a follow-up to their last release, 2017’s Trippin’ With Dr Faustus, and the “change in circumstance” noted in the bio for this record was Covid. Unfortunately, Balamir was among millions affected by the virus in the first wave. While he recovered, he grabbed a laptop and wrote. Eventually, his acoustic and electric guitars came into play, then equipment from Manchester was relocated close to home, and Swell was completed alone.

‘Well, life is like a mountain coming down on top of my head,’ he sings during the title track. The 20-minute anchor for the album, it begins as a six-note acoustic arpeggio with a subbass pulse, plus ‘chirrups’ and wind. Percussionless post-rock segues into an uplifting church organ section, slide guitar arches in and electronica washes swoop over. ‘Somewhere over the horizon the sun is waiting for the dawn to come’ -that ‘dawn’ brings a microtonal guitar solo and an otherworldly choir, resolving in a shoegazey shuffle with synthesiser fizz.

The name Jacques Cousteau will conjure images of the popular undersea explorer for many of a certain age, and on the song of the same name Balamir assembles a bossa novabased track of tingling triangles, woozy organ and guitar and rippling piano à la Saint-Saëns’ Aquarium, finishing with a tremendous 70s prog melodic synth part.

Finally, Seagull looks to the skies near Balamir’s house. The birds’ cries penetrate dense and reverberating synth chords before a stately post-rock blues emerges, and a swooping country-tinged guitar solo that Dick Dales itself to a theatrical end. As recoveries go, Balamir’s is remarkable.

JO KENDALL

LEE ABRAHAM

Only Human F2 MUSIC

Galahad guitarist deals with the pandemic on new solo outing.

L ike many others, Lee Abraham has channelled the events of the past 18 months into his ninth solo album. Thankfully, he does it so well that it becomes an erudite soundtrack to the life we’ve all been forced to lead.

The centrepiece to Only Human is opening track Counting Down. At just a few seconds under 30 minutes, this is dramatic and elegant, dealing with the way in which people literally wished away part of their life in order to escape the pandemic. This is perhaps the Galahad guitarist’s finest composition to date, his guitar work, clearly inspired by Steve Hackett, being complemented by Rob Arnold’s simple piano motifs and typically expressive vocals from Tiger Moth Tales/Camel man Peter Jones.

The remaining four, much shorter tracks hold up in their own right. Days Gone By is a wistful look back at the time before pandemic restrictions changed us, and Falling Apart deals with the mental anguish lockdown brought so many. Hands Of Time underlines how we’re all prisoners of nature. There’s a downbeat feel to the lyrics, but this is offset by the way Abraham musically celebrates the fact that life is still worth living.

MD

AEON ZEN

Transversal AEONZEN.COM

UK prog metal mavens head for the exit in style.

For the last decade, Aeon Zen have been one of the UK’s most distinctive prog metal bands. From 2009 debut A Mind’s Portrait to 2019’s Inveritas, Rich Gray’s genre-melting crew have matured and mutated, seemingly on a quest for technically dazzling, densely melodic glory.

Surprisingly, then, Transversal is the band’s final statement, as Gray elects to take his intricate but evocative music somewhere else, presumably under another name. A single, 10-part, 36-minute piece, this does feel like the culmination of all that creativity, as Aeon Zen dissect the highs and lows of their musical journey, over some of the finest music they have ever made.

Vocalist Andi Kravljaca provides this labyrinthine sprawl with its human focal point, bringing a sense of hope to Part II: A New Day and pathos to the bruising Part VII: Purgatory

Rechristened. But it’s Aeon Zen’s artful deconstruction of prog metal tropes that is the record’s hallmark, hurled together with urgency, but blessed with a tangible sense of closure. A guest solo from former guitarist Matt Shepherd on the closing Part X: It Ends As It Began makes the whole thing even sweeter. A class act to the last.

DL

ANNA PHOEBE

Sea Souls EAT THE PEACH

British violinist’s evocative synthwave-style instrumental journey.

A nna Phoebe describes her fourth solo album as “a psychological diary of a year of anxiety and reflection, with the sea as catharsis and mirror”, and Sea Souls gives off feelings of calm and dissonance.

Drawing on the inspiration of both Ennio Morricone and John Carpenter, Sea Souls has a definite synthwave feel, albeit with a cinematic approach.

Balancing violin, keyboards and sonic effects, the former Jethro Tull collaborator creates an introspective backdrop on which she paints a variety of moods. From the loneliness of By The Sea and Light Of Waves to the blossoming optimism of the title track, this provides insight into a personal journey through the Covid-19 era, but it also reflects what everyone has been dealing with, rather than becoming too much about the artist herself.

Guests including guitarist Phil Manzanera, who appears on Frozen Moon, and the European Space Agency’s Professor Mark McCaughrean, who provides a soundscape for Horizons, make invaluable contributions. There are moments reminiscent of Anna Phoebe’s work as AVAWAVES, but Sea Souls stands as a remarkable album in its own right.

MD

BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME

Colors II SUMERIAN RECORDS

Belated sequel to US prog metal visionaries’ breakthrough 2007 album.

I n the mid-00s, Between The Buried And Me found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Three albums into their career and fresh off the Ozzfest tour, the band were confounding audiences by juxtaposing metalcore and prog rock. At a crossroads of their own making, they went all in and embraced the facets that made up their music.

The result, 2007’s Colors, was a landmark for the North Carolina band. Years later, with the pandemic painting them into another corner and no live outlet to provide a release, BTBAM have turned inward to create a sequel to that record that’s as uncompromising and expressive as its very bold predecessor.

It’s all clever, headturning stuff. There are flashes of 70s prog pomp in the expansive and excellent two-parter, Never Seen/ Future Shock, which then seamlessly veer off into the jagged world of metalcore. Stare Into The Abyss is textured and rich, rising to an explosive crescendo from a sublime standing start. Then there’s the wonderful Prehistory, which is playful and arch, and The Future Is Behind Us, which boasts an irregular, staccato rhythm that rails against the world. The result is a worthy follow-up to the original Colors.