"Close To The Edge" vs. "Dark Side Of The Moon"

love both but

Dark Side

So Roger Dean versus Storm Thorgerson (Hipgnosis). 1 - 1

Lyrics - Dark Side. It communicated society's own misery back at them and made them want to hear more. And pay for it. Whereas Yes sound meaningful but it's games Jon plays. 2 - 0

Riff Siberian Khatru versus Money. Dead heat. 1-1

Yes on the ballads - And You And I sweeps the floor. Us And Them is the closest in comparison but as to the point it is it does drag a bit and repeated listening has not added to the listening ONCE in many listens. 0-2

Multipart epic - Dark Side for being an (albeit indexed) single piece of music to CLose To The Edge's slightly shorter 23 min number. 2 -1

One's great first thing (great time for Yes for me) but DSOTM evening times. 1 - 1

Overall musician ship high but Yes get the um, edge here. Points for the drum intro on Time. 2 - 1
 9- 7 PF
Vocal listenability. DG has the heh, edge with help from Wright. Rog is ok. Jon does marvellous throughout but slight advantage PF. 2 - 1

DG for solos, Bruford for overall drumming imagination and Wakeman for overall imagination and variety. Howe for overall guitar variety and mastery. Same goes for Squire's work. Interesting bit - how Rog leaves space for the music to sound while CS fills it up. 1 - 4

13 - 13. Final score. Dead heat. So it'll go to Univers Zero for the album title of the same name and as they are playing here (Relaps). Ok, seriously it's... CTTE as that really does bear more repeated listenings to me. Though Dark Side I can hear just by thinking abut it. Plus it's story of coming into being is way funnier than Dark Side.

Does this desert island have a decent electrohifidelograph? The LP of CTTE was nowhere near the same production as the Eclipse, er, Dark Side.

Ok, and question to all as a subtopic... which version of each album would anyone recommend for the listener. CTTE has a 2 CD  2 DVD version (I think... the SW remaster) and Dark Side has Immersion, Experience, SACD, Blu Ray, DVD Audio etc usw.

I find myself unable to vote in this poll.
I love both albums so much

DSOTM.
I like both, both of 'em are all masterpieces.
But it was not that hard to choose one.

Edited by kjtheguitarist - April 18 2016 at 04:42

Though the ultimate deserted island album is Tales for sure (for me). You'll need about 2 lifetimes listening to it if you want to know every note, Yes has always a surprise if you spin that masterpiece.

TheLionOfPrague wrote: Both are 11/10 albums for me, and I absolutely love them. In a "5 albums for desert island" I wouldn't hesitate to include both. If I have to pick, it's DSOTM. It does have a bit more variety and different moods. Every song is brilliant, Time rocks like crazy and has the most amazing intro in music, Us & Them is one of the most melancholic tracks ever, The Great Gig in the Sky gives me goosebums, Eclipse is the perfect ending.  Also the sound of it is out of this world, Alan Parsons did a fantastic job. Close to the Edge is perfect as well, the title track is my favorite piece of music ever, And You and I is gorgeous and Khatru has some fantastic moments. I enjoy at as much but it does have a bit less of variety. For a 20 minute piece CTTE doens't have THAT much different ideas, and the main riff in SK is repeated maybe a bit too much. But those are minor details anyway, they're both perfect and there are only a few albums I could think of that I enjoy as much as these two (Thick as a Brick, Queen II, Abbey Road, SEBTP, Quadrophenia and that's it probably).

OK, I had been thinking I would vote for CttE, for Dark Side is not even among my very favourite PF albums... but now you are making me doubt which one to vote for...

The Dark Elf wrote: Magnum Vaeltaja wrote: Catcher10 wrote: On a deserted island????? I would take the album that has more than 3 songs, that would get insanely boring after about 3 days. And the songs on Close to The Edge have more variety within each track anyway. You mean like Jon Anderson repeating "Close to edge, down by river" and "I get up, I get down" at least a hundred times?

Catcher10 wrote: On a deserted island????? I would take the album that has more than 3 songs, that would get insanely boring after about 3 days.

Close to the edge.

This has been my first vote for Dark Side in a very long time :P