RELAYER

Yes

Symphonic Prog

4.38 | 3481 ratings

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Uruk_hai

Review #49

So, this is one of YES best albums, isn't it? Well, yeah, it's a really good album but I do not think it deserves the five stars rate.

After Bill BRUFORD left the group Alan WHITE took his place and with him the band recorded "Tales from topographic oceans" which is a good album that would have been much better if the songs in it weren't so unnecessarily long; Rick WAKEMAN was the next member of the band to leave and the replacement was a Swiss musician called Patrick MORAZ who was more oriented to a jazzy kind of playing than the amazing classical education of his predecessor. The result was this quite nice not amazing album very different from other YES records.

1.- The gates of delirium (21:54): The longest song of the album starts with very stingy keyboard notes and then becomes kind of hard rocky with very intense bass lines by Chris SQUIRE; the song has many changes through jazzy moments until it ends with a beautiful soft piece called "Soon".

2.- Sound Chaser (09:30): In here Alan WHITE plays some interesting rhythms while Chris SQUIRE plays the bass as if it was the theme of a police or detective's TV series. Not bad but not great either

3.- To be over (09:03): Nice ballad with a very interesting electric sitar arrangement by Steve HOWE in the beginning.

It's not that Patrick MORAZ is a bad keyboard player: it's just that he is not as good as WAKEMAN. It's not that Alan WHITE is a bad drummer: it's just that he is not as good as BRUFORD. It's not that "Relayer" is a bad album: it's just that it's not as good as "Fragile" or "Close to the Edge".

YES never was as good as in the 71-72 period again.

SONG RATING: The gates of delirium, 5 Sound chaser, 3 To be over, 4

AVERAGE: 4

PERCENTAGE: 80

ALBUM RATING: 4 stars

Uruk_hai | 4/5 | 2020-12-2

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