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ExittheLemming View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2018 at 04:46
Originally posted by micky micky wrote:


and it is far away from the prog that anyone else did before.. or did since.  For the very reason it is pop prog than symphonic prog.   Seriously... compare this to anything off of Tales which was pure Symphonic Prog.  The differences in structure, feel and sound are quite substantial.  

I think I made the point quite well in my review

One of more defining.. yet at the same time moth eaten prog cliches is the side long epic. Of course other groups had tried them before. Some were just extended instrumental jams where stucture and composition were an afterthought. Most were of the cut and paste variety. Song vignettes of several minutes apiece strung together with instrumental bridges. What made Close to the Edge so powerful.. and at the same time so ..progressive was that it was a single 19 minute composition. The dangers inherent in that are obvious if you take any time at all to consider the music.. and the prospective audience.  Take a piece like Supper's Ready that some would proclaim to greatest side-long ever. Say there is a piece that doesn't really catch the listeners ear.. it is no problem.. Willow Farm is right around the corner. By the time you've grabbed a ham sandwich.. the musical context has changed. The listener is happy and goes on his merry way. With Close to the Edge.. not so fast. If the merry men of Yes hadn't paid extreme attention to perfection on that song and crafting a near flawless piece of music you would have been left with 19 minutes of sheer boredom. 


for therein lays the rub... find me something that sounds like the CttE.. you won't find it.  It is because only Yes were able to pull that off... 

Yes were not some uber symphonic group fusing classical structures with rock music. Gates of Delirium was a spot on copy of the structure of a space rock masterpiece of Pink Floyd's. A Saucerful of Secrets. What everyone seems to forget about Yes.. were they were first and foremost incredible song writers. Fans of pop music and HIGHLY influenced BY pop music. The stated goal of the group was to merge ..not classical with rock.. but high powered instrumental ability with the catchiness and hooks of pop music. Close to the Edge is nothing more earthshaking than possibly the world's first..hell maybe only 19 minute long pop song. Complete with the intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle8/instrumental-break/verse/chorus/outro format whose abandoment supposedly seperates prog from lesser forms of music hahaha. While everyone went on thinking that standard popular song formats would only support 2 or 3 minute long songs.. Yes showed that the standard pop format could support complex and sustained melodies. The trick of it again.. to pull it off it had to be all about quality. Otherwise.. you would have to aural equivilant of having 19 minutes of 'My Heart Will Go On: Love Theme from Titanic' pumped into your brain. Even with the kick ass rickenbacker.. I suspect that would not be enough to hold on to many listeners.


Have to agree with much of this (at least it's now a two man crusade Micky Wink) and it mirrors uncannily my own review of CTTE:

Where Close to the Edge' becomes unique is that it does not exploit any of the structural tricks and compositional conceits used by its contemporaries. Where Emerson would assimilate classical sources and themes into his own creations and Genesis would segue shorter song and instrumental fragments into a pseudo suite, 'Yes' dispense with either approach entirely. Close to the Edge's title track is a pop song, yes, one mother of a long one to be sure, but still a pop song for all that. Don't let the 'P' word cause your heckles to rise here, as I mean 'popular music song' and not in any pejorative sense.

Furthermore:

There are no traces of classical symphonic writing to be found.(Which often explains their 'symphonic prog' label stubbornly refusing to adhere to the bottle) Jazz and blues vocabulary are absent. Riff based composition is nowhere to be seen.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2018 at 04:55
^ Clap Well said. An explanation of terms goes a long way.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2018 at 06:43
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2018 at 09:19
Originally posted by The.Crimson.King The.Crimson.King wrote:

Originally posted by I prophesy disaster I prophesy disaster wrote:

Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

I will explain what I mean: I recently read all the reviews of "Pawn Hearts", and many people talked about "the guitar of Robert Fripp at the end of A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers". that is, however, neither Robert Fripp nor a guitar at all but actually Hugh Banton on the organ who does a perfect imitation of a Fripp guitar solo, in sound as well as in style.
 
Thanks for that Smile. I thought that part was Robert Fripp. Actually, I thought all the electric guitar parts, which aren't many that I can hear, were Robert Fripp (I assume the more common acoustic guitar parts were Peter Hammill).


Thanks to BaldJean for bringing this up.  For those still doubting, compare Hugh's distorted organ solo at the end of Plague with the sound and style of his distorted organ solo in Darkness 11/11.  Virtually identical Wink

if you are still in doubt about this "guitar solo that isn't one" ask Jim Christopulos, co-author of the VdGG book, who is on this site with the nick bucka001


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2018 at 09:26
Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

Originally posted by micky micky wrote:


and it is far away from the prog that anyone else did before.. or did since.  For the very reason it is pop prog than symphonic prog.   Seriously... compare this to anything off of Tales which was pure Symphonic Prog.  The differences in structure, feel and sound are quite substantial.  

I think I made the point quite well in my review

One of more defining.. yet at the same time moth eaten prog cliches is the side long epic. Of course other groups had tried them before. Some were just extended instrumental jams where stucture and composition were an afterthought. Most were of the cut and paste variety. Song vignettes of several minutes apiece strung together with instrumental bridges. What made Close to the Edge so powerful.. and at the same time so ..progressive was that it was a single 19 minute composition. The dangers inherent in that are obvious if you take any time at all to consider the music.. and the prospective audience.  Take a piece like Supper's Ready that some would proclaim to greatest side-long ever. Say there is a piece that doesn't really catch the listeners ear.. it is no problem.. Willow Farm is right around the corner. By the time you've grabbed a ham sandwich.. the musical context has changed. The listener is happy and goes on his merry way. With Close to the Edge.. not so fast. If the merry men of Yes hadn't paid extreme attention to perfection on that song and crafting a near flawless piece of music you would have been left with 19 minutes of sheer boredom. 


for therein lays the rub... find me something that sounds like the CttE.. you won't find it.  It is because only Yes were able to pull that off... 

Yes were not some uber symphonic group fusing classical structures with rock music. Gates of Delirium was a spot on copy of the structure of a space rock masterpiece of Pink Floyd's. A Saucerful of Secrets. What everyone seems to forget about Yes.. were they were first and foremost incredible song writers. Fans of pop music and HIGHLY influenced BY pop music. The stated goal of the group was to merge ..not classical with rock.. but high powered instrumental ability with the catchiness and hooks of pop music. Close to the Edge is nothing more earthshaking than possibly the world's first..hell maybe only 19 minute long pop song. Complete with the intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle8/instrumental-break/verse/chorus/outro format whose abandoment supposedly seperates prog from lesser forms of music hahaha. While everyone went on thinking that standard popular song formats would only support 2 or 3 minute long songs.. Yes showed that the standard pop format could support complex and sustained melodies. The trick of it again.. to pull it off it had to be all about quality. Otherwise.. you would have to aural equivilant of having 19 minutes of 'My Heart Will Go On: Love Theme from Titanic' pumped into your brain. Even with the kick ass rickenbacker.. I suspect that would not be enough to hold on to many listeners.


Have to agree with much of this (at least it's now a two man crusade Micky Wink) and it mirrors uncannily my own review of CTTE: 

Where Close to the Edge' becomes unique is that it does not exploit any of the structural tricks and compositional conceits used by its contemporaries. Where Emerson would assimilate classical sources and themes into his own creations and Genesis would segue shorter song and instrumental fragments into a pseudo suite, 'Yes' dispense with either approach entirely. Close to the Edge's title track is a pop song, yes, one mother of a long one to be sure, but still a pop song for all that. Don't let the 'P' word cause your heckles to rise here, as I mean 'popular music song' and not in any pejorative sense.

Furthermore:

There are no traces of classical symphonic writing to be found.(Which often explains their 'symphonic prog' label stubbornly refusing to adhere to the bottle) Jazz and blues vocabulary are absent. Riff based composition is nowhere to be seen.


The only bit I'm having a hard time swallowing is how the guitar intro isn't derived from free-form jazz in some sense. IIRC that was almost entirely improvised on one take between Steve and Chris. Everything else above is spot on IMHO.

"I am so prog, I listen to concept albums on shuffle." -KMac2021
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2018 at 13:18
That Wakeman's a blonde.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 13 2018 at 13:56
^LOL..........it is true that he certainly used to like his ale.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 00:30
Originally posted by Frenetic Zetetic Frenetic Zetetic wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

Originally posted by micky micky wrote:


and it is far away from the prog that anyone else did before.. or did since.  For the very reason it is pop prog than symphonic prog.   Seriously... compare this to anything off of Tales which was pure Symphonic Prog.  The differences in structure, feel and sound are quite substantial.  

I think I made the point quite well in my review

One of more defining.. yet at the same time moth eaten prog cliches is the side long epic. Of course other groups had tried them before. Some were just extended instrumental jams where stucture and composition were an afterthought. Most were of the cut and paste variety. Song vignettes of several minutes apiece strung together with instrumental bridges. What made Close to the Edge so powerful.. and at the same time so ..progressive was that it was a single 19 minute composition. The dangers inherent in that are obvious if you take any time at all to consider the music.. and the prospective audience.  Take a piece like Supper's Ready that some would proclaim to greatest side-long ever. Say there is a piece that doesn't really catch the listeners ear.. it is no problem.. Willow Farm is right around the corner. By the time you've grabbed a ham sandwich.. the musical context has changed. The listener is happy and goes on his merry way. With Close to the Edge.. not so fast. If the merry men of Yes hadn't paid extreme attention to perfection on that song and crafting a near flawless piece of music you would have been left with 19 minutes of sheer boredom. 


for therein lays the rub... find me something that sounds like the CttE.. you won't find it.  It is because only Yes were able to pull that off... 

Yes were not some uber symphonic group fusing classical structures with rock music. Gates of Delirium was a spot on copy of the structure of a space rock masterpiece of Pink Floyd's. A Saucerful of Secrets. What everyone seems to forget about Yes.. were they were first and foremost incredible song writers. Fans of pop music and HIGHLY influenced BY pop music. The stated goal of the group was to merge ..not classical with rock.. but high powered instrumental ability with the catchiness and hooks of pop music. Close to the Edge is nothing more earthshaking than possibly the world's first..hell maybe only 19 minute long pop song. Complete with the intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle8/instrumental-break/verse/chorus/outro format whose abandoment supposedly seperates prog from lesser forms of music hahaha. While everyone went on thinking that standard popular song formats would only support 2 or 3 minute long songs.. Yes showed that the standard pop format could support complex and sustained melodies. The trick of it again.. to pull it off it had to be all about quality. Otherwise.. you would have to aural equivilant of having 19 minutes of 'My Heart Will Go On: Love Theme from Titanic' pumped into your brain. Even with the kick ass rickenbacker.. I suspect that would not be enough to hold on to many listeners.


Have to agree with much of this (at least it's now a two man crusade Micky Wink) and it mirrors uncannily my own review of CTTE: 

Where Close to the Edge' becomes unique is that it does not exploit any of the structural tricks and compositional conceits used by its contemporaries. Where Emerson would assimilate classical sources and themes into his own creations and Genesis would segue shorter song and instrumental fragments into a pseudo suite, 'Yes' dispense with either approach entirely. Close to the Edge's title track is a pop song, yes, one mother of a long one to be sure, but still a pop song for all that. Don't let the 'P' word cause your heckles to rise here, as I mean 'popular music song' and not in any pejorative sense.

Furthermore:

There are no traces of classical symphonic writing to be found.(Which often explains their 'symphonic prog' label stubbornly refusing to adhere to the bottle) Jazz and blues vocabulary are absent. Riff based composition is nowhere to be seen.


The only bit I'm having a hard time swallowing is how the guitar intro isn't derived from free-form jazz in some sense. IIRC that was almost entirely improvised on one take between Steve and Chris. Everything else above is spot on IMHO.


You just might be right there as I've never been able to make head nor tail of the intro:

As accomplished as so much of the music is, I still cannot get my head around the instrumental introduction to this album i.e. that 3 minute freeform Howe dominated squawkfest 'the less than Solid time changes in 3/4' where not content with just trading licks, Yes appear to swap instruments also. It doesn't even sound like Yes and I can't think of a similar instance of such ugliness in their entire discography.




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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 01:46
Originally posted by Guldbamsen Guldbamsen wrote:

That prog is pretentious...well it is but so is every other music form that wishes to convey something more than what is just being uttered in mere words and chords. All art is pretentious...or else it rather misses the mark for me and becomes far too concise and square.


   "Calling me pretentious is like calling Black sabbath Loud."

                                     - Al Stewart


(I don't care if he was ever prog; it's just a great quote)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 02:58
A misconception of prog?  Ok, how about that Druid are (very nearly) the most popular band, ever.  I wonder how much I could get paid to help whomever it is spend all day doing "Druid" searches on PA to keep it at the top of the Top 50?  Sure, I like them, I own both their releases on vinyl; but I'm thinking someone out there has a couple keys jammed...  
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 06:59
Robert Fripp invented prog rock
Prog bands only cared about the music
The more notes you can cram in the better
The longer the track the better
The Mellotron is a musical instrument
Queen had anything to do with prog
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 07:43
Prog has to be complex all the time, have lot's of time changes, can't be song oriented(at times),must have keyboards, must have a musician named Peter or Tony, must be English, songs must be over five minutes long(always), must sing about fantasy or science fiction(or some other non mainstream topic)etc. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 09:25
Originally posted by richardh richardh wrote:

Robert Fripp invented prog rock
Prog bands only cared about the music
The more notes you can cram in the better
The longer the track the better
The Mellotron is a musical instrument
Queen had anything to do with prog
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

^This might be the most concise post in this thread.

"I am so prog, I listen to concept albums on shuffle." -KMac2021
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 10:14
everyone in prog is a wizard...oh. wait. that's true.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 11:33
BaldJean brought up a wrong belief about a fact. That's very different from controversy about genre classification, which is not at all about belief in facts, rather about drawing more or less arbitrary boundaries. Actually I don't think there was a single post in this thread in the meantime that came up with another example for the kind of thing BaldJean was going on about.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 11:38
^Maybe there simply aren't very many in that 'factual mistake area' and the most common prog misconceptions fall mostly in the personal subjective area.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 12:07
That Roger Waters played much bass on Animals.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 18:20
Originally posted by Frenetic Zetetic Frenetic Zetetic wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

Originally posted by micky micky wrote:


and it is far away from the prog that anyone else did before.. or did since.  For the very reason it is pop prog than symphonic prog.   Seriously... compare this to anything off of Tales which was pure Symphonic Prog.  The differences in structure, feel and sound are quite substantial.  

I think I made the point quite well in my review

One of more defining.. yet at the same time moth eaten prog cliches is the side long epic. Of course other groups had tried them before. Some were just extended instrumental jams where stucture and composition were an afterthought. Most were of the cut and paste variety. Song vignettes of several minutes apiece strung together with instrumental bridges. What made Close to the Edge so powerful.. and at the same time so ..progressive was that it was a single 19 minute composition. The dangers inherent in that are obvious if you take any time at all to consider the music.. and the prospective audience.  Take a piece like Supper's Ready that some would proclaim to greatest side-long ever. Say there is a piece that doesn't really catch the listeners ear.. it is no problem.. Willow Farm is right around the corner. By the time you've grabbed a ham sandwich.. the musical context has changed. The listener is happy and goes on his merry way. With Close to the Edge.. not so fast. If the merry men of Yes hadn't paid extreme attention to perfection on that song and crafting a near flawless piece of music you would have been left with 19 minutes of sheer boredom. 


for therein lays the rub... find me something that sounds like the CttE.. you won't find it.  It is because only Yes were able to pull that off... 

Yes were not some uber symphonic group fusing classical structures with rock music. Gates of Delirium was a spot on copy of the structure of a space rock masterpiece of Pink Floyd's. A Saucerful of Secrets. What everyone seems to forget about Yes.. were they were first and foremost incredible song writers. Fans of pop music and HIGHLY influenced BY pop music. The stated goal of the group was to merge ..not classical with rock.. but high powered instrumental ability with the catchiness and hooks of pop music. Close to the Edge is nothing more earthshaking than possibly the world's first..hell maybe only 19 minute long pop song. Complete with the intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle8/instrumental-break/verse/chorus/outro format whose abandoment supposedly seperates prog from lesser forms of music hahaha. While everyone went on thinking that standard popular song formats would only support 2 or 3 minute long songs.. Yes showed that the standard pop format could support complex and sustained melodies. The trick of it again.. to pull it off it had to be all about quality. Otherwise.. you would have to aural equivilant of having 19 minutes of 'My Heart Will Go On: Love Theme from Titanic' pumped into your brain. Even with the kick ass rickenbacker.. I suspect that would not be enough to hold on to many listeners.


Have to agree with much of this (at least it's now a two man crusade Micky Wink) and it mirrors uncannily my own review of CTTE: 

Where Close to the Edge' becomes unique is that it does not exploit any of the structural tricks and compositional conceits used by its contemporaries. Where Emerson would assimilate classical sources and themes into his own creations and Genesis would segue shorter song and instrumental fragments into a pseudo suite, 'Yes' dispense with either approach entirely. Close to the Edge's title track is a pop song, yes, one mother of a long one to be sure, but still a pop song for all that. Don't let the 'P' word cause your heckles to rise here, as I mean 'popular music song' and not in any pejorative sense.

Furthermore:

There are no traces of classical symphonic writing to be found.(Which often explains their 'symphonic prog' label stubbornly refusing to adhere to the bottle) Jazz and blues vocabulary are absent. Riff based composition is nowhere to be seen.


The only bit I'm having a hard time swallowing is how the guitar intro isn't derived from free-form jazz in some sense. IIRC that was almost entirely improvised on one take between Steve and Chris. Everything else above is spot on IMHO.

f**k me.. Capcha got me.. didn't save this time.

anyhow.. I'll try again. Sloppy seconds for you on this one.

Free Jazz? Hardly.  Note that the intro is largely in D minor and lacks one of the defining characteristics of Free jazz. The lack of harmonic structures...

As noted above..  I love Yes as much as anyone but let's not make them what they were not....  they were not fans of jazz nor were they particularly educated musically. It was only with Relayer that most anyone has pointed to any particular jazz influence to their music and even though I think it is bullsh*t.. many do think that album was influence by the fusion of Mahavishnu.  Free jazz is not simply not something Yes would ever incorporate into their music. Nor did they

what I think is you are confusing Free Jazz with dissonance. Note Howe's use of tritones in the intro. Again something Yes rarely did use as they were pretty much a Consonant band from debut to last album haha. However using it in the intro as they really put a charge into the song. It was one of the few WTF moments Yes really ever had musically.  That and Soundchaser hahah
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 19:14
^ That song intro may or may not have much to do with jazz, but the members of Yes were definitely into jazz and fusion, how much it shows in their music is open for debate, but Steve Howe has gone on to front his own jazz group, not even fusion, but real jazz.
Bill Bruford quit rock to play jazz fusion full time and there is John Anderson's short lived group with Jean Luc Ponty. The members of Yes (Squire, Kaye, White) backed jazz saxophonist/trumpeter Eddie Harris on "EH in the UK" playing a Miles Davis type free fusion jam. Also, in their own words, Yes claims that fusion group The Crusaders were a big influence on their compositions.
Certainly Tony Kaye was influenced by the same jazz B3 players that all the rock guys listened to such as Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff etc.

Edited by Easy Money - February 14 2018 at 19:22
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 19:38
Originally posted by Easy Money Easy Money wrote:

^ That song intro may or may not have much to do with jazz, but the members of Yes were definitely into jazz and fusion, how much it shows in their music is open for debate, but Steve Howe has gone on to front his own jazz group, not even fusion, but real jazz.
Bill Bruford quit rock to play jazz fusion full time and there is John Anderson's short lived group with Jean Luc Ponty. The members of Yes (Squire, Kaye, White) backed jazz saxophonist/trumpeter Eddie Harris on "EH in the UK" playing a Miles Davis type free fusion jam. Also, in their own words, Yes claims that fusion group The Crusaders were a big influence on their compositions.
Certainly Tony Kaye was influenced by the same jazz B3 players that all the rock guys listened to such as Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff etc.

Bruford of course was a jazzer and was from the git go... but he also wasn't particularly anywhere near the creative center of Yes's music when he was in the group.  So farnkly.. he doesn't count does he haha. Perhaps it was the freedom that K.C offered that led him off...  a damn fine drummer.. but just a drummer and also why Yes didn't lose a beat or sound really different by adding a more grounded Rock style drummer.  

CttE was of course Jon and Steve's baby and then everyone pitched in to flesh it out and perfect it.

fwiw. The only really jazz influence I ever saw in Yes was Peter Banks who was of course a Wes Mongomary disciple and yes in those first couple of albums.. oh wait.. he pretty much got the Jason Newsted treatment on the 2nd... so just on the first album.  Pretty much the only real jazz you saw from Yes.  Moraz added an intro to Soundchaser which was already composed, minus the intro, before he ever joined the group. He made it sound like Fusion with his Fender Rhodes but Soundchaser wasn't fusion, nor obviously were Gates or .. hahah... To be Over.

Yeah Howe went full blown jazz way down the road.. but I guess the point is.  Whether he liked it then .. learned to like it later.. outside of Bank's influence on teh first album there is pretty nadda outside of a song intro Moraz composed in regards to jazz.. which common sense dictates...  they weren't particularly jazz fans. Not then at least... not the ones who actually composed the real bulk of their music. What they loved... pop (Anderson, Squire) and Americana/early American (Howe) did made it into their music generally.  
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