Current Yesmen all busy

It's now clear that Yes have discussed, at least in general terms, recording a follow-up album to Fly from Here, but it is also clear that any new album is unlikely before 2013. However, that doesn't mean they are resting on their laurels. Quite the contrary, all of the current band have significant projects in the pipeline.

We know the Chris Squire/Steve Hackett, or 'Squackett', album is in the can, although we await release details. Meanwhile, Squire guests on Hackett's next solo album, Beyond the Shrouded Horizon, due at the end of September. Squire is on three tracks of the regular CD, including a 12 minute piece, and two more tracks on a limited edition bonus CD.

Steve Howe has been trailing a major solo project for later this year, although he's been tight-lipped on details. One report has him signed to Warner Classics. With a major label involved, expect some significant promo in due course.

Most imminently, due next week (as I type), is the Levin - Torn - White instrumental album. Samples released so far are intriguing as to what this power trio can deliver.

Benoît David, meanwhile, is finishing up [beginning] recording on the next Mystery release. A release in early 2012 now looks most likely. Lead composer, Michel St-Père, has trailed a possible 19 minute epic on the album.

Geoff Downes does not appear to have a new release quite as soon as bandmates, but there are plans for the 30th anniversary of Asia's debut album next year, and he's also involved with Trevor Horn's The Producers project (possibly now re-titled Us).

So, that could be 7 major releases over the next 12 months, enough to keep us busy until Yes return to the studio.

2 new guest appearances by Peter Banks

We don't hear enough from Peter Banks. It's been a while since we've had a significant project from him. Plans for a tour with Ambrosia were, unfortunately, put on indefinite hold as Banks has some health problems. However, this year has seen two releases with guest appearances by Banks, so good vibes to Pete and let me tell you about Muso & Proud and Electronic Church Muzik.

The more recent was the dB-Infusion album, Muso & Proud. Banks provides a tasteful solo on one track, "Midnight Blues", although I think the track as a whole is surpassed by several others on this great fusion album. The band is headed by Daniel Berdichevsky and also features keyboardist Gonzalo Carrera, formerly of Karnataka. Also guesting on the album is Soft Machine's John Etheridge, of whom Banks himself is a huge fan. I saw both Banks and Etheridge guesting live with the band a few years ago, and Pete was full of praise for Etheridge's work. Further guests include Hugh McDowell, formerly of ELO and who's been working with Asia and iCon, and Steve Hackett's brother John on flute. (John appears on Steve's Beyond the Shrouded Horizon, due later this month and with Chris Squire guesting.) Muso & Proud can be ordered online here and can also heard there on streaming audio.

You may have seen a lot of Jon Anderson interviews recently. Well, that's because he's got a new promoter, Billy James, who's been doing a great job organising them. Billy's also now doing promo for CIRCA: and Jeff Berlin. You may remember the name in connection with Peter Banks because Billy co-wrote Pete's autobiography "Beyond & Before". Well, Billy also performs himself under the name Ant-Bee and, earlier in the year, released Electronic Church Muzik, with Banks appearing on two pieces. Billy kindly sent me a copy of the album and I can recommend it.

There are plenty of further guests on the album, including Daevid Allen and Jan Akkerman (formerly of Focus and appeared on The Two Sides of Peter Banks back in 1973), but most notable are the multiple former members of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, namely Napoleon Murphy Brock, Don Preston, Bunk & Buzz Gardner, James 'Motorhead' Sherwood and the late Jimmy Carl Black. Zappa is a good starting point for describing this album: Ant-Bee has a similar mix of avant-garde music and humour, but what makes him distinct is a collage approach with multiple short tracks glueing together the album and connecting together longer pieces (Banks used a not dissimilar approach on his Can I Play You Something? release). The many guests are often given free reign on these longer tracks, as is the case with "Endless Journey", a spacey piece of around 6 minutes by Banks recalling his 1990s solo work to an extent. His other appearance is "The Guff", a short piece also with Gong's Gilli Smyth.

Not connected, but another album I'd like to mention while I'm here is The Winter Tree, the debut album from this new band that emerged out of Magus. Andrew Laitres of the band sent me a copy of the album and it's a nice affair, comparable to Camel in style, perhaps.

Forthcoming projects with multiple Yesmen

It's now a month or two since the release of Fly from Here and the band are on a break from the supporting tour. The other project that's had everyone excited, the Anderson/Wakeman/Rabin collaboration, is still some way off. But don't imagine that we're in some kind of lull when it comes to Yes-related news as there's a whole bunch of projects featuring multiple people connected to the band.

Due in a few weeks is Levin - Torn - White, an instrumental power trio consisting of Alan White, Tony Levin and David Torn. Torn and Levin previously worked together with Bill Bruford, but this new combo has taken many people by surprise. A preview teaser video is on YouTube and worth checking out. More here.

And in October the Anderson Wakeman tour comes to North America with 14 dates in the north-east US and Quebec. I was pretty disappointed when they played the UK last year, so I hope this tour goes better. A live album from the UK tour is also expected soon, although we await a specific release date.

Billy Sherwood remains as busy ever. The latest CIRCA: album with Tony Kaye, And So On, is now available through the band's website. Sherwood is also involved with Sonic Elements, a progressive rock project connected to the music software company Sonic Reality. The project, led by Dave Kerzner, involves both covers and original material. There is a preview of a piece called "Trifecta" here, which features Sherwood (bass, guitars) and Kerzner (keys) playing to a drum track from one of Sonic Reality's libraries. But the drum track is Rush's Neil Peart playing "Tom Sawyer", so "Trifecta" is a new piece of music built around a familiar drum track. Kerzner has said the project will also include some Yes covers involving Sherwood and "several other ex-members of Yes", but who has not yet been announced.

Last, but not least, due at some point this year is William Shatner's Searching for Major Tom, featuring both Steve Howe and Patrick Moraz, albeit on different tracks. Details here.

Raised in Captivity, by John Wetton

Raised in Captivity is the new solo album from John Wetton, made in close cooperation with Billy Sherwood. Wetton and Sherwood co-wrote and performed most of the album between them, but there's also a gaggle of guest stars. (These include Tony Kaye, which puts Wetton's tally of Yesmen he's worked with up to 11: Banks, Bruford, Kaye, Howe, Wakeman, White, Downes, Horn, Rabin, Sherwood and Khoroshev.) In recent years, Wetton has been reinvigorated after past health problems and he came to this album after the successful Asia and UK reunions. Sherwood is a self-professed fan of Wetton's work, particularly UK, and has also been busy on multiple projects these last few years, including CIRCA: and several solo albums. It looked like the right ingredients for a strong album.

Despite Wetton's recent reunion with UK and the appearance of guests like Robert Fripp, Wetton has not returned to the more progressive stylings of King Crimson and UK. Stylistically, Raised in Captivity is in keeping with Asia or Battle Lines, but with Sherwoodisms thrown into the mix. I expected that and was looking forward to this album. I was bitterly disappointed. Too much of this album is uninteresting, generic and forgettable. Take the opener, "Lost for Words", it perhaps shows the best combination of Sherwood's and Wetton's styles. With its catchy melody and fun wordplay, is a nice starter to this album, but 3 minutes into its 5 minute duration, I grow bored of it. There's just not enough meat. The same is true elsewhere. Like "Goodbye Elsinore", a nice enough song, but it outstays its welcome past Steve Hackett's solo. And these are not long pieces, so something's not right if I'm getting bored halfway through them! The diminutive "Steffi's Ring" is the only piece that doesn't outstay its welcome.

At least "Lost for Words" and "Goodbye Elsinore" begin OK. There are other pieces here that are just deathly dull. I struggle to imagine that anyone in 6 months time, even Wetton or Sherwood, will be able to remember such throwaways as "New Star Rising" or "Don't Misunderstand Me". At least the latter has a cute middle eight, but the former is just so bland. Other songs feel like repeats: "The Last Night of My Life" is a bad "An Extraordinary Life" (from Asia's Phoenix), "The Human Condition" is a poor "Information Overload" (on CIRCA: 2007).

John Wetton has long been known for his vocals and as time marches on and many of his peers have had problems with their voices (e.g. Jon Anderson, Ian Anderson), Wetton's voice has stood out even more. So it's somewhat disappointing that I don't feel he's been produced very well on this album, precisely where his vocals should be front and centre. Particularly on a piece like "Mighty Rivers", a duet with Anneke van Giersbergen that should be all about the vocals, Wetton's vocals don't sound as good as they do on the likes of Omega.

I guess most reading this blog are familiar with Sherwood's work in Yes/CIRCA:/World Trade/Conspiracy/Yoso/solo etc. His contributions here are distinctive, but at some point he crosses the line between distinctive and cliché. In particular, Sherwood's drumming style tires rapidly. He has recognisable fills, but he uses them everywhere. The comparisons with Asia are most obvious and while Sherwood is a talented musician in many ways, he's not as good a drummer as Carl Palmer, or as good an electric guitarist as Steve Howe. You can't help thinking that had the album been recorded by a band, say the recent UK line-up with Jobson/Machacek/Minnemann, then it would have been much stronger.

I've mentioned some of the guests already. Their contributions are variable. Steve Morse's solo on "Lost for Words" is disappointing. Hackett's in "Goodbye Elsinore" better. Jobson's violin on "The Devil and the Opera House" is one of the highlights of the whole album and makes you weep that he's largely turned his back on studio work. Palmer-James' words on the same piece add a nice variety in lyrical style. Yet, broadly, many of the guest appearances feel tacked on, most notable of all being the Fripp Soundscape used to bookend the title track. It's nice, but it has nothing to do with the piece it frames.

Sherwood has said, "John is incredibly prolific and fast... I can relate to that and so we created the template of the entire record within the 1st 10 days of working together. [...] We spent 30 ish days together working every single day with the exception of the day I had to go to the L.A. NAMM show. Everyday we worked we moved forward..." In his Classic Rock Presents... Prog interview about the album, Wetton likewise makes the contrast with the long and expensive process of making Battle Lines. I'm glad they worked well together and the speedy production must have helped keep the budget manageable, but the problem is the end result sounds like it was put together that quickly. If this was a set of demos, I could perhaps approach them with some optimism. "Take those ideas. Drop those ones, they're not working. Now record it with a proper band." As a finished album, there are bits and pieces I like, with "Lost for Words", "The Devil...", "Steffi's Ring" and "Goodbye Elsinore" the strongest, but not one song works for me all the way through. Little of it is actively off-putting (except perhaps "We Stay Together"), but so much of it is is superficial and unmemorable.

I re-listened to Battle Lines and Caught in the Crossfire for a comparison. 24 hours after Caught in the Crossfire, I was still humming "Turn on the radio..." I can't get 24 minutes into Raised in Captivity before wanting to listen to something else.

If there is a note of ire in my review it's not because I think poorly of Wetton and Sherwood. Quite the opposite: they've both done better, which is why Raised in Captivity is so disappointing. If you want some good work from Sherwood, I recommend his last solo album, Oneirology. For Wetton, there's a wealth of options: Asia's Omega is a good album, while fans of his 1970s work should get Ultimate Zero Live. And for an archival release, anyone who likes Red or UK should consider the recent DGM download of 1977 rehearsal sessions by Fripp, Wetton and Mahavishnu Orchestra's Michael Walden: see here.

In the interests of giving a right to reply, I point you to a thread on Yesfans.com. I mentioned my dislike of the album there and Sherwood offered a rebuttal here (scroll up for my prior comments). [3 Sep EDIT: Link now fixed.]

Poll: Best track on Fly from Here

And our latest poll results, for your favourite track on Fly from Here, are as follows. There were 124 votes:

"Into the Storm"	30	24%
"Fly From Here Pt II - Sad Night at the Airfield"	25	20%
"Fly From Here Pt I - We Can Fly"	16	13%
"The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be"	14	11%
"Hour of Need"	11	9%
"Life on a Film Set"	10	8%
"Fly From Here Pt III - Madman at the Screens"	8	6%
"Fly From Here - Overture"	3	2%
"Fly From Here Pt IV - Bumpy Ride"	3	2%
"Fly From Here Pt V - We Can Fly Reprise"	3	2%
"Solitaire"	1	1%

So, perhaps no surprise that "Into the Storm", picked out as a highlight in so many reviews, has come out top with about a quarter of the total vote, although cumulatively the "Fly from Here" suite amassed about half the total vote (61 votes; 49%).

The one piece so far played live, the single "We Can Fly", comes in third with 13% of the vote, beaten by Part II. Surprisingly, "The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be" came fourth, despite having attracted some criticism in reviews.

I can't remember now whether I voted myself for "Hour of Need" or "Fly from Here - Overture"!

What should Yes play live in July?

Results to a quickie poll on the main site, I asked what should be the focus for the forthcoming Yes tour, and your answers (82 votes in total) were:

Play songs from the new album, Fly from Here: 46.3 votes
Play more from Drama: 12.3
Play neglected pieces from the late 1990s/2000s: 8.5
Play neglected pieces from the 1970s: 6.8
Play neglected pieces from the YesWest era: 4
Play neglected pieces from the Banks era: 1
Play the 'greatest hits': 1
More solo spots for each band member: 1

So, that's pretty conclusive. Some reports have suggested a focus on Fly from Here and Drama, which will please fans. However, in a recent Billboard interview, Squire described the tour with Styx as, "more of a summer shed, rock 'n' roll-y tour and we'll have to obviously play Yes songs people are familiar with and squeeze it all into 90 minutes." He did add, "Later on [referring to the European leg] we'll hopefully go into a format where we have a longer playing time, so we'll be presenting more of the new album."

Fly from Here released (in Japan at least)

Fly from Here, the new Yes album, is now out, at least in Japan. European release is due 1 July and US/Canada follows 12 July. (German site Musicload.de reportedly already have the album available digitally, but in Germany only.)

The Japanese release has a bonus track of a longer version of "Hour of Need". At 6:46, it's more than twice as long as the regular 3:07 version. Fans outside Japan will have to decide for themselves whether it's worth paying the extra for an import copy for that additional three minutes and thirty-nine seconds of music! (I remember buying Keystudio solely to hear the otherwise unavailable "Lightning", Wakeman's intro to "Children of Light", and that's less than a minute long, so I'm in no position to pass judgement.) I've yet to hear the longer version myself.

Several retailers (e.g. CD Universe, HMV Japan) are reporting that the Japanese release has a second bonus track, described as "a rare track, which was going to be included in the album "DRAMA."" This is not the case. They are mistaken; possibly it's a garbled reference to the title track. There's just the "full-length" version of "Hour of Need".

The first reviews of the album, aside from my own one (available here) that is, are beginning to appear and I expect we'll also see a range of interviews with the band members to accompany promotional efforts. Sales indicators seem reasonably good so far, with the album as high as #50 at Amazon.com (US), #98 at Amazon.jp (Japan), #56 at Amazon.co.uk and #26 at Amazon.ca (Canada).

And, of course, the US tour begins in a few weeks and Downes' live return to the band. There's a poll on the website front page asking what you think the set list should focus on.