For a band as accustomed to turbulence as Yes, the 1990s seemed especially unstable. If the 70s were their crowning progressive years and the 80s an MTV-assisted commercial triumph, the 90s looked confusing and clouded – not made any easier by 1991’s illfated Union, which brought together the various disparate factions of the band with less-than-stellar results.
Lost in the middle of it all was their 14th album, 1994’s Talk, a record that’s been perpetually overlooked, thanks in part to its alluringly light touch. Thirty years on, this reissue – released as four-CD box set, two-LP white vinyl edition and basic single CD editions – goes a long way to elevating it to its rightful place in the Yes canon.
In the wake of Union, expectations were low when Yes’s former Atlantic Records boss Phil Carson approached Rabin about getting the line-up that recorded 1983’s hugely successful 90125 and 1987’s equally slick Big Generator back together for JVC’s label Victory – the so-called ‘Yes West’ featuring Squire, Anderson, guitarist Trevor Rabin, drummer Alan White and keyboard player Tony Kaye. Rabin agreed and brought in Anderson immediately to work up some material, playing eye-to-eye with acoustic guitars and boomboxes in a hotel room.
Talk was of one of the first albums to be recorded directly to hard drive (at Rabin’s home studio) and the band had to endure software hiccoughs, yet for an album with just seven songs and an average track length of seven and a half minutes, there’s little flab. Anderson, Rabin, Squire, Kaye and White seem energised by being together again, and all five play to their strengths.
Marrying AOR with prog, The Calling is a superb opener, with Anderson at his most strident, Rabin power-chording away like himself and soloing like Steve Howe, and Tony Kaye nodding to Rick Wakeman. It’s a stunning reassertion of the power of the group, offering a potted history of the band. Anderson’s exhortation to ‘give me more of the same/There’s a fire burning in my heart again’, captures it perfectly.
I Am Waiting finds Yes in power ballad territory, while the delicate Where Will You Be compensates for the raging loud/quiet of State Of Play and Real Love. The multipart Endless Dream is the standout, however – the band turning in a 15-minute-plus song for the first time since 1977’s Awaken. Pacy, packed with drama, it updates the group’s formula equally as well as what Pink Floyd were doing the same year with The Division Bell.
Of the additions to this box set, one disc features three versions of The Calling – a radio edit, a single edit and a ‘special version’ – all pleasant yet largely inessential. The same goes for the instrumentals Where Will You Be, Walls and an excerpt of Endless Dream. But the disc is enlivened by a crazed, untitled Trevor Rabin instrumental and an incredible 10-minute demo of Endless Dream, with Anderson extemporising over a fixed mid-90s drummachine pattern. It’s fascinating to hear such a perfect, crystalline voice sounding rather throaty and, well, dirty.
The final two discs of the four-CD edition features a (mostly unreleased) June 1994 show from Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center in Canandaigua, New York. Augmented by keyboard player Billy Sherwood, the Talk lineup romps through material from throughout their career, alongside six selections from Talk. The most uproarious reception is given to 70s warhorses And You And I, I’ve Seen All Good People and Roundabout. Chris Squire is on fire throughout, and although Rabin lacks Steve Howe’s intricacy, he makes up for it in sheer power (it hints towards the ARW shows of the 21st century). It’s amusing to hear just how excited Jon Anderson was that they would be performing on The David Letterman Show the following evening.
Back in 1994, Talk was the right album at the wrong time. Although the ambient dance acts were publicly worshipping it, prog was still a four-letter word. More damagingly, Victory went bust almost as soon as Talk was released. Within two years, Trevor Rabin and Tony Kaye were out of the band and Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman were back – a lineup that would last just a couple of years.
Listening to Talk today, divorced from the politics and the prog-hate of the era, it’s a fine, tuneful, brawny addition to Yes’s frequently jewelled catalogue. The album came with the note “Dedicated to all Yes fans…” and, in a way, Talk is unique in that Yes themselves seem also to be identifying as their own fans, and simply revelling in the music that they were making. Chris Squire once said that the original idea for Yes was “always good playing and good singing”. The elegant Talk has an plenty of both.
Talk
SPIRIT OF UNICORN MUSIC
BASS COMMUNION
The Itself Of Itself FOURTH DIMENSION
Noise and abstract beauty from the hardest-working man in prog.
It’s been 13 years since Steven Wilson last graced the world with a full Bass Communion album, and given his prolific output, it’s a wonder The Itself Of Itself arrived so soon. In just a few years he’s managed to bring out a Porcupine Tree record and two solo albums under his own name, as well as overseeing the prog-focused seven-LP box set Intrigue. Then there’s his sideline in spatial audio remixing for the likes of King Crimson, Roxy Music, Jethro Tull and Yes. On top of that, there were two Bass Communion tracks released in 2021 as part of the soundtrack of Wilson’s ongoing, as-yet-unreleased film project, And No Birds Sing.
The Itself Of Itself feels almost like the antidote to all that activity. These seven tracks slow the world down to such a degree that they almost feel liminal. Predominantly for the attention of fans of drone visionaries Sunn O))) and Earth, the album also contains long, meditative passages that are redolent of the bravely expansive terrain explored by Fripp and Eno half a century ago. Wilson continues to deconstruct sound as much as he makes it, with the modus operandi to take analogue noise on a journey, starting with unwanted production by-products like flutter and hiss. Musique concrète and studio manipulation take everyday sounds into the cosmic, enticing the listener with surprising patches of hypnotic warmth or euphony, products of chance from controlled environments.
The title track features a Mellotron flute that decays and distorts as the epic soundscape disintegrates. There are shards of melody that suggest themselves hidden somewhere in among the aural gloaming, accompanied by indistinctive burbling emerging from the shadows, though it’s a cacophony for the most part. There are moods elsewhere that are more ambient and welcoming, such as Apparition 3, a sequence of three sustained notes that oscillate wanly, quavering as they ride the waves unhurriedly. It’s spartan and enigmatic, and in spite of those descriptors, it’s the most musical thing here, becoming more and more mesmerising as each note shimmers in the distance in keeping with its title.
For all of Wilson’s busyness, the best way to listen to The Itself Of Itself is in a spare hour where nothing is happening, interrogating the sound in a meditative, non-critical way. Blackmail may throw up beauty within the radio static that permeates it; A Study For Tape Hiss And Other Audio Artefacts may even offer moments of tranquillity. Perhaps most pleasing of all is opener Unperson, maintaining a drawn out cinematic tension that really doesn’t disappoint when the climax finally kicks in.
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