Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Jon Anderson: Olias Of Sunhillow (1975)


 A lot of fans love this album and consider it to be a lost Yes album but it’s always come across as gobbledygook to me. I appreciate  that he created this completely by himself and, I mean, it really is one of the proggiest prog albums ever, it’s just…I dunno. It’s so airy-fairy. It has no muscle to it. It just drifts. Occasionally swirling, but mostly drifting. The playing and arranging are pretty fantastic, and there are some wicked passages, here and there. “Flight Of The Moorglade” is the closest thing to a Yes song that may be found here (they played this song on their brief 1976 Solo Albums tour) and the instrumentals are cool to zone out to as well. 

That is one thing about this album. Yes albums require a certain level of attention in order to properly enjoy. This, however, seems to work better when it is in the background, either of an activity or just meditative thought. Much of this is hypnotic, most of it is out there. 

Like Beginnings and Fish Out Of Water, Olias Of Sunhillow perfectly displays exactly what Jon Anderson brought to Yes, while not really sounding like Yes, further proving that Yes is far more than its individual players.

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