REMIXES

Talk about odd ducks in the music world. It really doesn't get more at odds than the fusing of techno and trance with symphonic prog rock. Well that's exactly what we get here and it's all thanks to Steve Howe's son Virgil (aka The Verge) who diligently spliced and diced and reinterpreted the 70s world of YES music and put it into a 21st century electronica context. The reaction has been fierce as many a prog fan shutters at the thought of such a blasphemous endeavor. Well, call me a traitor to the prog aesthetic if you must but I think this album is brilliantly done.

This is not merely putting a beat to pieces of YES songs as the title may suggest. Verge meticulously went through the YES catalog to find the pieces he deemed most adaptable to a techno and trance feel and then set out to splice apart the individual instrumental and vocal tracks to put them together in a new way to fit into the proper electronic beat fashion. Many of the tracks do come from the less progressive albums such as "Tormato" but Verge masters the true challenge of taking strange progressive timings like the 5/4 of "Five Percent Of Nothing" and creates an unusual yet recognizable version of the music.

This is obviously not the starting point for any newcomers to YES' music but for those who have an open mind, an insatiable appetite for the cross-pollination potential of totally disparate genres and have heard the original versions so many times that they welcome an unlikely way of reinterpreting them, then this is for you! I know i'm in a lonely room with this one but I think this is an excellent album just awaiting the day when the potentials of remixing prog with electronica will become more widely accepted in a world where the monotony needs to be broken up by such strange new ideas. I think this album embodies the true spirit of what "progressive" is all about and YES remain at the forefront of such progressive thinking by releasing such things despite what the public thinks.