MAGNIFICATION

This album came as a surprise to me. Early in their career, Yes tried this idea and produced Time and a Word, an album that they always listed as a disappointment. I had personally thought that appraoching this concept again would not appeal to them, given the near- failure of the Time and a Word album (which nonetheless had many excellent moments). Inevitably, this set will be compared to Time and a Word and all the other band-plus- orchestra albums ever devised (Days of Future Passed, Unledded, etc.). The high quality of the recording and the complexity and sheer beauty of the ideas presented make Magnification a musical undertaking that both fulfills and surpasses any expectations that one might have. I hesitate to say that it is Yes's finest album because it is so different from all their others; but at the same time, if they were never able to record together again, this would be a good place to stop. Magnification creates its own world, and one that you must enter without compromise in order to understand. This is a quality which few pop albums possess (the second Oblivion Express album is another), and it is all the more powerful for it. The orchestrations highlight aspects of the Yes aesthetic in ways that the band could not achieve on their own. Obviously, many will hate this album, but that's only because people listen for and hear so many different things in music. For me, this album perfectly epitomizes the pop-rock-folk- jazz-classical continuum that Yes first established more than thirty years ago.