I love this album and The Ancient, I agree, is indeed a masterpiece. No other piece of music that I know of evokes a stone age or bronze age world with such visionary power, and Howe and White really are amazing here. It's probably the part of Tales where the band are stretching the frames the most, and The Ancient was a vital stepping stone towards the next album, the most radical the band ever did. ' It was only last year that it struck me how Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was most likely one of the inspirations for The Ancient. Not as if they were "nicking" anything from Rite, but there are some similarities in musical technique and in the evocation of a primeval, wild past. The band knew about the Rite - on Yessongs, we can hear Jon intoning the opening phrase just before Wakeman's solo spot.

The more i look at it, the more i like it. i do think its good

I've always felt that Close To the Edge, Tales From Topographic Oceans, and Relayer were somehow connected, like a trilogy of epics.

Meh. I'd put the sublime Close the Edge and Gates of Delirium over this stuff.

Tales from Topographic Oceans is the number 1 of my 5 favourite Yes's albums.

MrLtia1234 YEAH, and Awaken please

Yes, for years I just couldn't believe how a group could do such incredible music. The tone of each guitar riff, the deep mellotron sound it like "played piano on my soul", so to say... "Nous sommes du soleil..."

I think you are right. Pretty sure Rick's point stands, though.

Igor Maxwel agreed

If only.... also, Drama is great- one of their best, I reckon. Compared to Tormato it's a masterpiece. Great playing.

MrLtia1234 and Yes finally sounds like Metallica on there

+ThePopMoss Gosh!

+ThePopMoss I like all of The Ancient. To me, it is the closest thing I can think of to a concerto for electric guitar (with the rest of Yes as the orchestra), and it's pretty abstract, in an almost Stravinskian sort of way. It's my favorite track on the album for sure (closely followed by TRSOG).

+docsketchy I tend to listen to Steve Howes Tales from Topographic Oceans excerpts on Not Necessarily Acoustic!

***** Agreed. It's easy to dismiss because it goes between the superior Relayer and CTTE. Wonderful for long car journeys.

Haven't listened to it since the early 70s. I did learn the Ancient though and play that on the guitar all the time.

Don't think so. I do remember we used to have fights at school but as with everything in the 90s, I think it was ironic.

Daniel Moore That's.... a good way to approach it. I bet 99% of the time that works!

Such accusatory grenades are lobbed at especially ambitious pieces of music, perceived (properly or otherwise) to fall neatly into the framework of rock music, by e.g. the likes of Mr. Robert Christgau - whose innards don't sit very well with ideas like rock-classical fusion ;-) I'm really ok with the droll Mr. Christgau, but it makes me believe such critics are just taking easy pot-shots at convenient targets to seem clever !!.....

I think the boys of Gentle Giant felt similarly. I have seen at least one video of them performing under a banner that read "pretentious"... :D

Daniel Moore Yes! I always liked that. Also, people like Mr Christgau are actually being pretentious!

No, it would not :-) But, y'know, Relayer.

Oh, dear; you didn't get it. Nevermind

EXCEPT for Relayer Going For The one Tormato even Drama...which are also YES classics..YOU FUCKTARD

Yes, the fact that someone doesn't agree with you (or in fact does agree with you but didn't use the exact words you wanted) must mean that they didn't even listen to the album. Thanks!

Abraham Rodriguez I don't think you need to listen very carefully to hear the reprises. Pretty blatant, plus the bit-naff reference to ctte. In fact, I don't think there's anything difficult about this album - it's all lovely melodies. Just a bit of padding on The Remembering and The Ancient.

I do agree on that. I concede that I didn't express my point well or further. My comment was more directed towards I would say casual listeners of Yes or music in general instead of avid experienced listeners that pick up on these things very easily. The ones that rag on the album for being in-coherent. And I do admit that that's true to an extent, particularly in comparison to Close To The Edge or Fragile which were more refined. I also agree that the melodies are all accessible, and there's various points where one section could've been turned into a traditional rock song. For me personally, it wasn't until I heard The Ritual through my first listen where it all started coming together and I actually started noticing and paying more attention to the other pieces, and how one melody kept appearing again and again through all of them. It's why I mentioned the word "noodly" that's used by some to describe this album, but it is connected in a way. It's just really long and drawn out and thus, makes it a tiring listen. They definitely could've improved some things, it's like they tried to make an actual full 4 movement classical symphony in the form of a rock band, with melodies that sound like Sibelius. But it came up a tad bit short. I'm not accusing you of making this kind of criticism. I just don't feel it's as random as some make it out to be. But yeah, it's pretty accessible compared to say, Henry Cow. Apology for the wall of text.

Yeah that sentence could be misinterpreted! :-) Also, that terrible album (The Gospels- absolute garbage next to TFTO) was in 1987, not long before he rejoined Jon for the second time- nearly 15 years later. I think you're right though - like I said all those years ago in this review, he's a conservative in every sense of the word (arguably not really 'prog' even though he was in a prog band) and old school traditionalist ideas come part and parcel of that. He's *very* 'establishment' as well. However, I still think his criticism is essentially correct, as much as I love Tales, it was vaguely comical for a milkman from Acrington to write a concept album about a specific element of a far eastern religion he discovered a couple of years before. Very Spinal Tap! The question is whether it matters - I think for Sam it does as he needs something to hang the music on. For me, I just like the music & it's awesome. I find the lyrical content funny, but as with most Yes, it's just about the phonetic meaning.

Music is profound?

MrLtia1234 Ah so just a general thing. I thought there was a common theme throughout the songs I missed.

STICK to the Clash and Dream Theatre then...this album is fantastic

You'd be surprised how much it's had a reappraisal in recent years. The hate for it was always exaggerated, anyway, thanks to Wakeman's mucking about.

I'm going to revisit once I pull the trigger on the new Wilson mix, but it's a little pricey. I'm a big fan of Wakeman though. Having heard Tales through the years I'd agree with the viewpoint that it's one big, flabby, slab of music. It really needed to fit on one disc, imo. Incidently, I came across your channel because I'm just starting my KC journey. There are so many live recordings! I need to check your channel to see if you cover the "Collectors" series......

Funny, we've just had another loon complaining at length that we are defending the album too much and any criticism is ad hom.... Yes fans are mad.

Thanks, dad.

Please provide your musical analysis demonstrating your objective observation.

What a mess. "that's the last one I view (first and last)" Whoops - you forgot you've already commented on a different video. "hey guys - let's hear the music rather than your criticisms." you mean... you expected a performance of the album on a video labelled 'review'? Bit strange. "I take it you are incapable of playing music yourselves and prefer to destroy those who can - the critics' syndrome." Actually I can play the guitar parts to the whole album. No, I won't be 'posting' it. Learn it yourself. What actually is it you are criticising with this ad hom stuff? It's clear not anything we actually said, especially as I said how much I like it. So what's really going on with this kind of comment? Let's take a look: "I take it you are incapable of playing music yourselves and prefer to destroy those who can - the critics' syndrome." oh.

There's people on your computer saying things111 Who are they??? I've never met them before what can I do? They are saying things that aren't exactly what I want them to say1111 I think you might be broken.