CLOSE TO THE EDGE

There are not many bands who managed to release three masterpieces one after the other. But yes did, 'close to the edge' is regarded as the masterpiece of the masterpieces. Yes were at their prime, and at their most creative peak and left us with another wonderful piece of work. The music is as intricate and complex as before, combining howes fast eclectic guitar, squiers thick bass lines, and wakemans fabulous and bombastic keys. Yes is trying to experiment with longer pieces, and not like in their next album, where they failed to do so, this time they really succeeded. The pieces have a logical development and flows from one part to the other pretty smoothly. Yes created an entire world, as it shows on the amazing cover, which suits the music perfectly. The music is pure symphonic rock, where everyone of the band donates in the right time to the beautiful picture, wakeman is doing a very good job creating all sorts of sounds to match howes multiple guitar sounds.

The complicate arrangments is never boring and makes the listener to stay on his toes all the time. All three pieces are equaly interesting, the first and the third follows the same line although the first is longer and has a wider line of development reaching higher than the other two. 'close to the edge' does have a good main theme which revolves around itself for about 9 minutes, then lets the listener to relax with some beautiful sounds created by all, with great singing, it climaxes to wakeman heavy church like organs and then suddenly breaks to a fierce comeback to the main theme. Beautiful stuff. The second piece is much more relaxed but still very symphonic, containing beautiful acoustic guitars and some bombastic keys creating a wonderful mood. Siberian khatru is fantastic coming with one of the grooviest guitar riffs ever, amazing guitar throughout and some masterful keys work.

Although i enjoy a lot of albums more than this i can not deny that this is one of the best albums created in the 70's and yes deserves all the credit. 5 stars