OLIAS OF SUNHILLOW

Olias of Sunhillow is really the best solo album by a Yessman. (Patrick Moraz's Story of I is a close second.) This album is a solo album in the true sense of the word. It's a pure studio creation with Jon Anderson playing all the instruments and writing all the music, very well I might add. No credits on the actual instrumentation are offered though. There's definitely percussion, keyboards, guitars and vocals going on here and Jon plays them all with great skill. The music is kind of classic Yes music blended with world music. I don't think Jon has done any other projects like this. I have a lot of his solo albums, which are all band efforts.

It is a concept album based on Roger Dean's cover artwork for Fragile. Roger didn't do any of the artwork for this album. Dave Roe is credited with illustration and design. He did a pretty good job for not being Roger Dean. I have the LP ($1.98 used bought before the CD era) and Japanese import CD. The cover art is very nice. For the inside of the gatefold LP cover you get four pages with the concept story of Olias of Sunhillow and an inner sleeve with they lyrics. Unfortunately, the Japanese CD has all the artwork reproduced, but when it's shrunk to CD booklet format, the words lost their clarity. Really hard to read, but at least they had the good sense to reproduce it. The artwork and story are very much a part of the package here.

Essential to prog fans and the best Jon Anderson album outside of his work with Yes.