KEYSTUDIO

This album (culled from the studio parts of Keys to Ascension I & II) captures the grandeur and the spirit of the '70's Yes. Honestly, Yes hasn't released anything this good since Going For The One, and Keystudio can be compared to such masterpieces as Fragile and The Yes Album. 5 stars all the way!!!

Let's break it down.

Footprints (5/5): I didn't even bother listening to this track for the review. It's that memorable. Everybody in the band goes all out on this, and Jon's lyrics consist of memorable one liners. (Sure, they don't make much sense when you put them together, but since when have we ever demanded that from Jon?) The best song on the album, I promise you.

Be The One (2/5): From the best song to the worst. This song never quite gels. I remember one person describing it as of the quality of a Steve Howe demo. That's far too harsh, but it gets the point across.

Mind Drive (4/5): This one gets praised to the heavens by Yes fans. Sure it's an interesting epic, and it doesn't suffer from the fault of something like The Ancient or The Remembering in starting out poorly. On the other hand it doesn't reach the heights that most Yes epics do at the end, either.

Bring Me To The Power (3/5): A slow start knocks a point off this jazzy song. Stick with it, though, because there's a lot of fun in the second half.

That, That Is (4/5): A great but flawed epic. What are the flaws? Well, there's that slow part 7:05 that really takes a while to get going anywhere, but the real problem is 4:24 -7:05 where Jon inserts a song about a gangland driveby. Sure, it makes sense lyrically, but this is not what we expect from Yes. If you can ignore that though, this might be one of Yes's best composed epics, with recurrent themes and a great guitar solo later on. If they just could have had sense enough to put something else in at 4:24.

Children of Light (5/5): Keystudio contains the UNEXPURGATED version of Children of Light, including the Wakeman intro that he used as an excuse for quitting the band once again. Frankly, it doesn't add anything. But it's developed into a great song. The Keystudio version sounds a little bit busier than I remember the Keys to Ascension version being as well, but I still like it.

Complex, thoughtful, inspiring. That's Keystudio. And those are the reasons I started listening to Yes in the first place. This is the Yes that has been missing for twenty years. Get this album and enjoy it.

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