JON ANDERSON

If you're coming to this straight from listening to Yes you may find it a bit jarring, because whilst you can here echoes of the Yes sound here and there for the most part it's in a sonic universe of its own, but for my part I think this one is a real grower. It took a while before it grew on me, in fact, but now the mysteries of Moorglade are opening up to me I think it's a fine piece of work.

Starting off with an engaging, somewhat folkish piece is an instant hit with me - not that I listen to much Folk at all. "Time Has Come" is not typical for Anderson, but executed in a splendid manner and makes me want to hear more of that approach. Simple, yet effective and achieves it's aim of drawing immediate attention.

What follows is a bit of a disappointment after such start. Typical meandering pieces speckled with his usual angelic instrumentation. Musically, it fails to captivate however pleasant it may be in the right mood.

Then suddenly track 11 "Whalewatching" wakes me with a powerful guitar strumming that commands my attention again. Here, he drives his message through with gentle aggression (well, somebody had to come up with such term...). Curiously, the song goes out with a Celtic- like chant that surprisingly blends in well as an outro. (This chant is so haunting that I tend to sing it out loud on my walks at the beach, ready to be surprised by something out of the ordinary. It appears to be an effective call, inviting unseen realms to be present.)

Well, these two track pretty much are of the only interest to me here. If Anderson were to put together an album with similar songs, it would feature amongst my very favorites.

With this Deseo remixes ic could have been worse. First of all Deseo is far from being the best album released by Jon Anderson, even including his newage period, so there'was not much to destory and in some cases the originals are incredibly enhanced by the electronics.

"Deep Floresta" is better than the quite boring original. The endless repetitions are more common with electronic music and the rhythm hasn't been changed to the usual 4/4 of disco music. In addition Jon's voice is Jon's voice, so not as bad as I was expecting.

"Intercity 125" is hard to map on the original song. It's remixed on the usual boring 4/4 with a reggae bass line and I think just short sequences of the original. Nothing more than chill- out music to be consumed after a rave. Thumbs down.

Deep Forest seem to have better interpreted Jon's music. "Speed Deep" is just a piece of house music but a little bit of the original world music is still present in the background. However also this track is nothing else than chill out. Jon's voice is accelerated so to sound innatural.

"Master Mute" could even be a Jon's original. The kind of electronic pop tracks found on "In The City Of Angels". A decent one.

"Deseo Reconstruction" from Future Sound Of London is probably the only track with some prog inside. It's a pity that everybody remixes a song has to make it sound so standardized. I see this track as a missed opportunity The ethnic parts in the middle remind me to Senmuth, but the sequenced parts are too disconnected.

"Amor Real" starts electronic, without drums. That's a good thing as it's different from every other song heard on this album. Unfortunately the original was one of the few good tracks of Deseo so this version isn't half that good.

"Master Mute Instrumental Mix" is the same without Jon's vocals but the absence of vocals gives a wider range of possibilities for the arrangements. Unfortunately they are house. The rub-a-dub bass line and a violin give some flavor to the track but this is not a reason good enough to buy this album.

"Bless This" had a connection with the house music even in the original. In this case I quite prefer the remix which is surely more ambient.

So it could have been worse, but this is one of the less essential albums I have found on PA. Not so bad to deserve one single star but I have to say that my second star is like "a gift for the career". An album that is on PA only because Jon Anderson is included in the site, but neither him would have been accepted on PA on the basis of an album of this kind.

I mean that "Time Has Come" with that 12strings guitar sounds like the acoustic parts of "Brother of Mine" and effectively with Jon's voice and lyrics how could it sound different? By the way, I'm one of the few who loves that album, so I really like this song as well. Few percussion, probably congas, the already mentioned guitar and some bird's cheeps are the support to Jon's voice, even if later there's also a choir of overdubbed Jons.

The birds continue singing on "Harptree". A harp solo is a very unusual thing in this context: even though the author's was probably thinking to write a newage instrumental, it sounds very folk and medieval. It brings the early CLANNAD to my mind.

"Take A Little Time Out" starts folky as well, with harp, acoustic and 12strings guitars, but Jon's vocals and the melody that he sings are between the classic YES and the duo with VANGELIS, thinking to Short Stories in particular. The instruments are strangely tuned and this is the most remarkable thing technically speaking.

I don' t understand what "Scraggle Cat and Puss Cat Willum" means. It's nice, but it's less than one minutes and seems to be a children's rhyme, maybe a trditional, but I'm not sure.

"Concerto Uno" is opened by Jon's acoustic guitar, low volume bass and vocals. This is a complex song that would have been better served by a full symph arrangement. I imagine Wakeman and mainly Howe playing it. With the current unplugged instrumentation it allows you to only guess how good it is, also because Jon's guitar playing is not what we can call "excellent", not totally bad anyway. Probably better than Bob Dylan's.

"Harptree Too" is another harp solo piece with birds and child.I think the title has been mistyped on the album as I suppose that Jon was meaning "Harptree Two". Consider that the Concertos and the Harptrees have all Italian numbers (Uno, Due, etc.. plus Harptree tree that in Italian is "tre").

"Concerto Due" is another song that I would like to hear played by YES beacuse of its musical reachness. A bravo to Jon for the songwriting. Also the arrangement is very well done even sticking with the acoustic instruments that he imposed to himself for this album with the exception of bass and birds. The only negative thing is the "touch" on the bass strings of the acoustic guitar. Not properly a "Segovia", however he sometimes sounds like the early ANTHONY PHILLIPS.

Another short journey the the 16th Century (and its birds) with "Harptree Tree". Very British, too.

"That Crazy Wind" is a typical Jon Anderson's song. We can find songs of this kind on almost all his albums, including some YES and the collaboration with VANGELIS. Luckily there aren't the Salsa percussion and brass which usually make me skip the track on Jon's albums. At the end, even this track is not bad.

50 seconds of a woman speaking then another Mambo comes, with some congas this time. "Heaven Knows" is quite good but I don't like Jane Luttenberger's voice on this song. She sounds too similar to Jon so I don't understand why he has asked somebody else ti sing it.

"Whalewatching" may be inspired to Greenpeace as well as to "Star Trek IV.". A song with an interesting melody and "Whalesh" language...I would have preferred it a bit shorter.

The title track reprises the 12strings of the opener and looks like an attempt to sound radio- friendly, but it could have worked better some years ago.

In general it's a good album and the songwriting. It is probably the best and most complex one in Jon's solo discography.

For Jon's fans it's a four stars. Three for the others

This is the main reason why we can hear sorcerer's voices and American Indian ethnic parts in this album, together with the usual Anderson's songs made of major chords and positive feelings.

Without going track by track, this is mainly a newage album but is also extremely good and the ethnic parts add something to songs that would have probably been too repetitive or "positive" without. The second track "Quick Words" is an example. It concentrates a number of themes and ideas in less than three minutes. Is it prog too? I think yes. As much as "Brother of Mine" on ABWH is prog bu regardless the labels it's good.

All the songs here are well arranged and Jon is seconded at the vocals by Deborah Anderson, the one to whom the homonymous song from Private Collection is dedicated and one of the few persons in the world able to sing with the same vocal of Jon but one octave higher, however there's plenty of vocalists in the lineup.

I have liked a lot the sax of Paul Haney on "Semati Siyonpme" that's one of the most ethnic songs, but there are many good things in this album and also some unexpected dark moments like the short "Good Day Morning".

Give a read to "in Teachings of Don Juan" before spinning this album up. You don't have to believe to what's in the book, just set your mind on the right level of consciousness and enjoy.

Only keyboards and vocals, both ethereal, are in this album.

There's a short prelude sang by Jon and his daughter Deborah (the one of Private Collection): "Myo-Maya" that's followed by 14 minutes of keyboard soundscape with birds and drops of water to celebrate the "New Eire Land". Can you imagine a sunset on the cliffs of western Ireland? Jon surely can...

"Angels Embrace" has a lot of Vangelis in the sounds used. Jon sings "Myo Maya" again. It's a song that could have found a place in one of the Jon and Vangelis albums, unfortunately it should have been a three minutes song. Six are too much.

"Cloudsinging" starts on the same chords of the previous song, but thanks God it's not a follow-up. If you are in peace with the world or dreaming of fairies and woods this is for you. I like ambient music, but this is too much. If this is Paradise I'm not too interested.

"Prayersong", hey please stop the birds,... one thing: the tracks fade one into the other even when they should be dosconnected. 30 seconds of birds to fade out the previous track are too much. The song itself is not bad, a sort of Christmas carol like on 3 Ships on which appear even some minor chord.

Can you survive to 11 minutes of "Naturmusic"? Well, this is not how boring as one can expect, you just have to be tuned to it. The chords are less "major" and this makes it less cheesy. The rain fits well even though the birds make me wanting to be a hunter...just newage, but not bad.

"Midnight Cello" is the only true highlight of the album. It has a good melody with a classical mood. An ideal soundtrack for the final sequence of a dramatic movie, a sort of epitaph of the day passed...

What does it have to do with prog? Nothing, really.

Now I know that I was missing one of the best things ever released by Jon Anderson, very different from his masterpiece Olias of Sunhillow but comparable to it in terms of quality.

Some songs are effectively not originals, but the fact that they are arranged and executed by an orchestra gives them an added value. The orchestral arrangements are reminding of the orchestral parts of "ELP Works", that's an underrated album that I like very much, and starting this album with this version of State of Independence gives already the idea of a masterpiece.

There are some songs that I think were previously unreleased. "The Kiss" is signed as Jon and Vangelis, but I don't remember to have heard this song previously as well as Candle Song, still from the duo.

"Chagall Duet", featuring the vocals of some Sandrine Piau is an interesting and unusual (for Jon) song, only "Hearts" is for me too similar to the original and not at the same level, probably because I'm a fan of 90125.

So this is an excellent album orchestrated in an Aaron Copland style and with an excellent vocal performance of Jon. Also the songs composed by Jon alone, like "Under The Sun" show the good shape of Jon whose verve was apparently gone lost with "Deseo".

Only 4 stars, but I could later change my mind and add the fifth