“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, July 4, 2011

Yes, I Can't Help It


Graham likes Rush. I like Yes—there I said it. So I'm quite excited about their new album (listen to a preview, out in a few days). It has Trevor Horn on production and backing vocals. He was the lead singer for a while in 1980. Rick Wakeman once said that Horn producing the “classic Yes” sound would be a great idea, distinct from what Horn did with 90125. (Give it all to me, I love it all, helplessly.)

Okay, it doesn't have Jon Anderson, and I love Jon Anderson. I have a signed copy of one of his DVDs for heaven's sake. But I'm quite happy with this, really. Roger Dean cover? Love it. I have Roger Dean porcelain coffee cups with Tales from Topographic Oceans, Yessongs and Relayer paintings. Looks like Avatar doesn't it? Not an accident. Here's something I wrote on that.

Nice single cover too:




And I really really love the way Horn does vocals and production. Really rich and with a Vaughan Williams like sensibility. And it's his song. Marvelous song, really. Beautiful invocation of the ambiguous chord that ends the verses in another great obscure Yes song, “Turn of the Century.”

Okay more than you needed to know.



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