I love The Remembering and The Ancient

Ah, Time for my say  -

• The Remembering - Great track, And one that does have a certain nostalgia to it 'Wait all the more regard your past, school gates remind us of our class' Excellent lyric, And to be quite honest, once you have got a feel for the album, It's quite easy to start picking up the meanings behind the lyrics. I love the intro to this track, That meandering guitar is quite special and is one of my favourite parts on the album. It did take me a good while to appreciate the WHOLE thing as I really just wanted to hear certain parts, But it holds up very well in my opinion. Another part I really like is the acoustic section, Very upbeat, Puts me in a great mood, 'Force the bit between the mouth of freedom didn't we learn to fly, Remember to sail the skies, Distant Suns', Easily the most underrated track. I like the spacey outro, But it doesn't have the same climatic feel to it as 'The Revealing Science of God' or 'Ritual' does. Another thing I don't like about it is, There is a bit of padding, There's a couple of moments on the track where you do feel 'Hey, didn't I just hear that', But it doesn't happen too often which is good
• The Ancient - By far the hardest track to get into. The guitar at the start isn't typical Steve Howe is it? Instead of ten notes a second he plays one note for ten seconds! To be honest I find it a good idea but it can get a little annoying after a while. This track I feel does have the most amount of padding, There's less ideas in this track than in the other three, But there are still great moments, The Acoustic section that takes up the last eight or so minutes for instance. My favourite part in 'The Ancient' is 'And their Gods sought out and conquered', I love how Squire makes that final note last. To be honest I find Jon to be weakest here, But the crazy percussion and slightly random feel to the playing is an interesting experiment, But I do find it the weakest track

I have a lot of theories regarding 'Tales from Topographic Oceans', I might post my review soon. There's a lot I have to say about the album, As you can see  That is a chunk of it anyway.

Easy Livin wrote: If they'd cut out the first 10 minutes of "The ancient" I'd agree with you 100% Beter.

Agreed. The first 10 minutes are pretty tough on the ears.

Tommy wrote: The Remembering is my favourite track on this album. I hope one day they revive it live!

Jon wants to play it live. Now if he can just overcome a veto by Rick...

Tommy wrote: The Remembering is my favourite track on this album. I hope one day they revive it live! The drum solo on The Ancient spoils this track for me but Chris Squires bass more than makes up for it!

I'm pretty sure your're thinking about Ritual, not the Ancient.  The Ancient is the one with extensive guitar work.  Ritual has a bass solo and a drum solo.

Yeah, and I love both of these tracks too! 

If they'd cut out the first 10 minutes of "The ancient" I'd agree with you 100% Beter.

Chopper - nice avatar by the way, comes across really well.