TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS

After the ambitious and successful "Close to the Edge", 1972, and its "live" spin-off (and also quiet a display) "Yessongs", 1973, it was a mystery to me what could follow next. After all, that work CTTE was the 5th studio project at the time. In prog those days that was like an almost complete discography.

So what came next was this over-ambitious 4 sided album with my favorite Roger Dean YES art-cover, which went by the name of "Tales from Topographic Oceans", 1973. Following the well known route of downfall after a precedent masterpiece, they actually threw everything into the salad bowl and sweated every drop of inspiration that still was left, packaged it beautifully and geniusly, and threw it to us Yes followers.

Well my expectations far exceeded the real thing. I never without forcing myself have being able to listen to the whole project in one sitting. (To be impartial, this happens to me often with double albums.) So self-declared guilty of this crime, this album is over-worked for peanuts.

By then nobody doubted their virtuous skilled talents as performers. Yes! ..That was crystal clear! (if doubts existed you could refer to the "Yessongs" 3 album set.) So, I myself knew they were top performers. Second excess I consider quiet a downer is the abuse of "exotic" mixtures without more excuse than using this as a posture of being instantly multi-cultural related...

If you are looking for one of the best "Classic to Baroque" downfalls this is one hell of an example. The real miracle of Yes was "Relayer" which raised from these ashes.

***3, " I thought this release was the end of Yes " , PA stars... (which by the way was not that far.)