Complex, ambitious, experimental, conceptual, long-form, fantastical, pretentious — just a handful of adjectives often used to describe progressive rock. While the genre often defies categorization and can’t be easily contained, the aforementioned descriptors couldn’t be more on-the-nose when it comes to the Yes opus from 1974, Tales From Topographic Oceans.
Over the years, the double album has earned a bit more praise and appreciation. Upon its release, however, it was met with derision and confusion. Keyboardist Rick Wakeman was so disenchanted, he quit Yes after they toured the record. Nevertheless, it topped the U.K. album chart and snuck inside the Top 10 in the U.S., earning a Gold record.
Now, 53 years later, a Super Deluxe Edition of Tales From Topographic Oceans offers a complete picture with new mixes, previously unreleased material from the sessions, and live music from the subsequent tour. Available as a 12-CD, double LP, single Blu-ray box set, the new mixes, including an incredible Dolby Atmos version, were done by Steven Wilson with extensive liner notes by Syd Schwartz.
Sprawling across four side‑long tracks, Tales From Topographic Oceans grew out of a conversation singer Jon Anderson had with King Crimson percussionist Jamie Muir about Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. Anderson was particularly taken with the book’s stated four shastras, that outline different aspects of spiritual knowledge. This resulted in the four movements comprising the album: “The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of The Dawn),” “The Remembering (High The Memory),” “The Ancient (Giants Under The Sun),” and “Ritual (Nous Sommes du Soleil).”
Developed while on the road with Steve Howe, the album came together in the studio as the other band members — Wakeman, bassist Chris Squire, and drummer Alan While, making his first appearance on a Yes studio album — struggled to bring it to fruition. Despite their reservations, the playing and performances are nothing short of superb. Squire’s bass lines are articulate and prominent, weaving around Howe’s fluid guitar work. Wakeman’s keys add color and atmosphere, while White not only anchors the shifting rhythms, but contributed a little bit of piano.
The textures are rich, the vocals layered, and the guitar-keyboard mix creates integral ambient soundscapes. The overall production, led by Eddie Offord, is dense yet vivid, allowing the ensemble’s interplay to shine.
The Super Deluxe Edition shares previously unreleased in-progress versions of all four album tracks, while the set’s live material, sourced from shows in Zürich, Manchester, and Cardiff, finds the band in their element, spreading their wings at every turn. For audiophiles, the Atmos mix, alongside the 2016 5.1 surround mix, is immersive and encapsulating enough to give any doubters cause for reexamination.
As Schwartz says in his liner notes: “Without Tales, there’s no Relayer. No pivot to leaner, sharper structures in the later 70s. No map gets drawn without first pushing the edges of the known world — and Tales is where Yes did exactly that.” Wakeman returned to the band in 1977 when they recorded the much leaner, song- oriented Going For The One and stayed on until 1980 when both he and Anderson left (though not for good). From there on out, Yes in its many forms conformed to a more strict, linear path. Still, the complexity, ambition, experimentation, and pretentiousness of Tales Of Topographic Oceans remains a highwater mark in the annals of progressive rock.
~ Shawn Perry
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Tales Of Topographic Oceans (Super Deluxe Edition)
