MAGNIFICATION

We left Yes with The ladder a good album, and better than their works in the last 20 years, so after a while they have made another album, is this good as the previous? It is. We have only 4 Yes now, Anderson Squire White and Howe, but they have hired a full ochestra with a complete different sound, so this is like a particular album? No it isn't. And finally which kind of music they have made here? Yes music not more nor less than good music from the legendary guys that wrote Close to the Edge. To be honest there are some parts that sound wrong to me (for example Don't Go that sound almost as a Rabin era song), but almost the whole work here is good enough to worth some time to listen. In detail we got 10 songs, almost full of the orchestral work (used here as an instrument), with Howe playing his guitars as the lead of the whole thing (the intro of We Agree is perfect, even the song don't give the same feeling) in pair with Anderson voice that for me here works as an instruments, finally the songs have a kind of charge given to them from the couple of Anderson and the orchestra itself, it some passages have some emptyness typical of an album without keyboards. Even with these points Magnification doesn't achieve the status of a masterpiece, why? The reason is simple: we got 10 song of course, leave Don't Go (the orchestral work don't aid here), skip Can You Imagine's words (Squire is not Anderson and his voice don't works as istrument), skip Soft As a Dove (since it doesn't have music just a weak solo, not prog), so we got a nice group of song and some lesser works, that's the main reason for not being a masterpiece of prog. Conclusion? 3.5 stars, again rounded to 4 as The Ladder. Yes it is music, and Yes still it is good, not a masterpiece.

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