defend the indefensible: TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS, by YES

I listen to this one straight through all the time and love it. The Steven Wilson remix is the version for me. Honestly, I only listen to his Yes remixes of the albums he's done as my go-to versions these days. They're tremendous.

regular tales front to back is beyond my drug budget. a short-ish jam to break up the four 20-minute long songs would've been tight. pass within and soothe this endless night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyzxoYivYII

this is my favorite yes album

I listen to this one straight through all the time and love it. The Steven Wilson remix is the version for me. Honestly, I only listen to his Yes remixes of the albums he's done as my go-to versions these days. They're tremendous.

I like the 2003 mix of this (with the two minutes or so of tweedling at the beginning, before the vocals come in). I don't like the Steven Wilson remix.

That two minutes is CRUCIAL!

(not joking)

I agree 100%.

NTI I found 320s of his stereo remixes on the t0rr3nts. No way in hell can I afford a Blu-Ray Yes discography!

alternate truth / alternate view / surely surely

this album rules and everyone who hates it sucks

This straddles the line between 'posts very much in character' and 'posts very much out of character'.

the wiki page for this is incredibly entertaining

When the band settled into Morgan Studios, Lane and Anderson proceeded to decorate the studio like a farmyard. Squire believed Lane did so as a joke on Anderson as he wished to record in the country. Anderson brought in flowers, pots of greenery, and cut out cows and sheep to make the studio resemble a garden as a typical studio did not "push the envelope about what you're trying to create musically".Wakeman recalled the addition of white picket fences and his keyboards and amplifiers placed on stacks of hay. At the time of recording, heavy metal group Black Sabbath were recording Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) in the adjacent studio. Singer Ozzy Osbourne recalled the Yes studio also had a model cow with electronic udders fitted and a small barn to give the room an "earthy" feel. "About halfway through the album", said Offord, "The cows were covered in graffiti and all the plants had died. That just kind of sums up that whole album". At one point during the recording stage, Anderson wished for a "bathroom sound" effect on his vocals and asked the band's lighting engineer, Michael Tait, to build him a plywood box with tiles stuck onto it. After Tait explained to Anderson that the idea would not work, Tait "built it anyway". Sound engineer Nigel Luby recalled that tiles would fall off the box during recording takes.

Wakeman felt increasingly disenchanted by the album during the recording stage, and spent much of his time drinking and playing darts in the studio bar. He also spent time with Black Sabbath, playing the Minimoog synthesiser on their track "Sabbra Cadabra". Wakeman would not accept money for his contribution, so the band paid him in beer.

In one incident during the last few days of mixing, Anderson left the studio one morning with Offord carrying the tapes. Offord placed them on-top of his car in order to find his car keys, and proceeded to drive away, forgetting about the tapes. They stopped the car to find the tapes had slid off and fallen on the road, causing Anderson to rush back and stop an oncoming bus to save them.

Nous Sommes De Lager

Was this album ever really critically panned? The only real slagging I can think of off the top of my head was a one-star review from... cdnow? sonicnet? one of those allmusic guide precursors whose archives are completely lost to the ages. Other than that I don’t really remember it being received any worse critically than, say, Drama or Tormato.

The Rolling Stone Album Guide of '92 gave it one star, IIRC, and it appears in the Guterman/O'Donnell Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time book (those guys particularly have it out for prog, saying of Genesis that they were better than most prog bands "i.e., they were boring only 90% of the time").

yeah it was definitely the punching bag du jour of people who don't even like prog in the first place. I think it's fairly well liked these days though it's still seen as being totally ridiculous and the moment where Yes stopped being the Best Band in the World. the criticism for Tormato feels a bit different - nobody was really expecting a great record out of a prog band in 1978. in fact its Going For the One that was the outlier in that regard.

this album rules and everyone who hates it sucks

― american bradass (BradNelson), Wednesday, August 7, 2019 8:32 AM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

she's still right

This is easily a top 50 of all time for me and by far my favorite Yes album

I like the 2003 mix of this (with the two minutes or so of tweedling at the beginning, before the vocals come in).

That two minutes is CRUCIAL!

Originally omitted from the LP at Ahmet Ertegun's request, as if a little bit of atmospheric guitar and wind sounds would be the final straw for the Yes audience.
With that intro intact, there is a mirror image of the last seconds of the album; though there's something to be said for the drama of the LP version, starting right with the vocal.

I heard the dramatic start-from-zero version first, but I still like the 2003 version better.