FISH OUT OF WATER

Chris Squire's album 'Fish Out of Water' was recorded at Virginia Water, Surrey, and London Morgan Studios during the spring and summer 1975. The work, to be sure, would not deserve a top rating for two reasons: the solo voice of the famous English bass guitarist, not at his best, and the quality itself of the recording, still not digital in the CD version. Squire's only work as a soloist, anyway, is absolutely remarkable (5 Stars) for the original melodic inspiration, for the impressive, wide and complex composition (in full 'progressive' style) and for the exquisite arrangements with the excellent contribution of Bill Bruford's drums, Patrick Moraz and Barry Rose's keyboards, Mel Collins and Jimmy Hastings's winds. There's reason to regret that Squire did not insist in searching for further and clearer personal achievements as he had done in this 1975 experience. In 'Fish Out of Water' Squire enjoys again, after three years, the contribution of Bruford's drums: together they had been the protagonists of the years 1968 to 1972, the best period of a 36 year old artistic and musical career for the 'Yes'. Their bass guitar and drums, together again after the peaks they had reached in 'The Yes Album', 'Fragile' and 'Close To The Edge', are absolutely brilliant in all the compositions in the album, but notably in 'Hold Out Your Hand', 'Silently Falling', 'Lucky Seven' and 'Safe(Canon Song)'. We must not forget that, in the light of long and rewarding careers studded with hits and approvals, Squire and Bruford represent two milestones in the bass guitar and drums history of the latest four decades. Their valuable and substantial contributions are beyond all comparison even in the world of 'experimental jazz', that Bruford had frequented, but not Squire. Wonderful and incomparable, the monumental sound of Squire's Rickenbecker 4001, widly or softly quilted by the plectrum, is always full of numberless effects and limitless expressions; and a legend likewise is Bruford's drumming, with the unmistakable sound of the roller, open and full of harmonics: the English drummer faces, develops and resolves the most difficult beats, the odd and syncopated ones, with the same elegance and fluency as ever. If you listen to 'Fish Out of Water' today, nearly thirty years from its first publication, if you listen with a special care to the above mentioned tracks, without missing a single tune, you will see how their qualities are all amazingly there: the obvious question is, which levels would the two musicians be able to reach nowadays if once again they joined in order to conceive and carry out a piece of work of their own, centred on the investigation of the technical, expressive and dynamic possibilities of their instruments, beyond the difference in their musical genres, beyond the 'Yes' (Squire) and the 'Earthworks'(Bruford). themselves ?

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