The sprawling The Steven Wilson Remixes set spotlights five classic studio albums from progressive music’s high priests and recent inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Yes, with each title meticulously remixed and spruced up by Steven Wilson.
The collection includes 1971’s The Yes Album and Fragile, 1972’s Close To The Edge, 1973’s Tales From Topographic Oceans and 1974’s Relayer. On any listen to these records, you’re reminded of the pristine (and yes, at times, slightly long-winded) work of Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Steve Howe, Tony Kaye, Bill Bruford, Alan White, Rick Wakeman and Patrick Moraz. On these remixes, first and foremost, everything you heard before comes to the fore, but now the particular separation of the instruments\really comes through. And then there are those nuances that Wilson found that were always too deep in the mix to pick up on.
Fragile and Close To The Edge is where I began to really notice sounds I had not heard before. That signature piccolo snare of Bill Bruford is so clear and popping in the mix on Fragile, especially on “South Side Of The Sky” where he sidles alongside Rick Wakeman’s piano and Chris Squire’s bass in the middle harmony part. On “Long Distance Runaround,” I heard some Steve Howe guitar noodlings I had never heard before, and I think I found another bass in the overdubs of Chris Squire’s solo on “The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus).”
”Heart Of The Sunrise” presents the true richness of Anderson’s lower range and gives big booming brilliance to Squire’s bass. The “Close To The Edge” suite (what was the first side of the original album of the same name) is pristine. The strummed acoustic of “And You And I” sounds so full and rich and every nuance of Howe’s slide work truly rolls round your innards on this newly mixed version.
Tales from Topographic Oceans, the sixth studio Yes album, presenting a four-sided, two-disc concept based on Autobiography of a Yogi, is probably Yes at their most unintelligible. This has always been a tricky listen, at best, but here with all the instruments (especially Steve Howe’s multiple guitars) slicing and dicing in and around Jon Anderson’s wordplay. Wilson’s mix makes this heady album sound fantastic.
What is most evident to my ears from the Relayer album is Steve Howe’s guitar work. He wails across the full first side of “The Gates Of Delirium.” The high point may be “Sound Chaser” where Patrick Moraz, whose one and only Yes album is Relayer, throws round some truly tasty jazz electric piano and Alan White rolls in from another planet. Howe is on fire with his cleaner-than-clean Telecaster cutting through. The bass runs Squire manages under one of the strongest Anderson and Squire vocal moments really leaves you exhausted by the end.
I’m usually not a fan of album remixes, especially when it comes to classic rock albums. Steve Wilson is an adept musician, producer, writer, remixed guru (he’s been tasked with remixing albums by Jethro Tull, XTC, Gentle Giant and Chicago), and huge fan of everything he touches. And as a solo artist and with Porcupine Tree, he mines some deep progressive cred.
Mainly what we get is Wilson finding hidden sonic nuggets that didn’t come out fully on the first go round of the mix. Technically, he is changing the original, which can be problematic to the purists. For the Yes fanatic, however, The Steven Wilson Remixes is quite often glorious.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
