most progressive yes album

[rememberer]

The Yes album, because it was the real birth for what Yes is, it set the niveau, tone, ambition, lust and abilty to discover new musical ground, it established the high quality of the guitar-bass-keyboard-interplay, that is so typical for Yes, it presented Steve Howe right from the start as a guitar-avantgardist...

... it is the album, that has everything that Yes is already in it. It is the soil that on everything that came after could grow...

That's actually rather hard to disagree with, and very well said also. It looks like I voted Tales on this some time ago, though, and I'll stand by it - that still makes enough sense to me. I probably just define progressive more in terms of how far off the well-travelled path one wanders, and less in terms of how much a thing differs from its precedessor. (In fact, it occurs to me just now that 90125 is an obvious departure from Drama, yet I'm not sure how many votes it's attracting for that).

With Tales one can almost get the sense that one is a fellow explorer of the territory with the composers and performers, it can be so avant-garde in places. Some parts seem to be over there with King Crimson where lack of accessibility is probably a healthy sign of progginess.

With Relayer, one can get the sense by comparison that now the musicians are more familiar with the territory, for certain now they are the tour guides, and they are taking the express route to an already known destination - the longest piece does indeed remarkable forward motion and maybe even help tempt people to think Tales is meandering or padded by comparison.

By becoming more concise with Relayer in comparison to TFTO, it seems to me as if perhaps they became slightly less proggy for it - or less exploratory, or less adventurous, or less way-out-there, or whatever you want to call it.

[PeterCologne]

That's actually rather hard to disagree with, and very well said also. It looks like I voted Tales on this some time ago, though, and I'll stand by it - that still makes enough sense to me. I probably just define progressive more in terms of how far off the well-travelled path one wanders, and less in terms of how much a thing differs from its precedessor. (In fact, it occurs to me just now that 90125 is an obvious departure from Drama, yet I'm not sure how many votes it's attracting for that).

With Tales one can almost get the sense that one is a fellow explorer of the territory with the composers and performers, it can be so avant-garde in places. Some parts seem to be over there with King Crimson where lack of accessibility is probably a healthy sign of progginess.

With Relayer, one can get the sense by comparison that now the musicians are more familiar with the territory, for certain now they are the tour guides, and they are taking the express route to an already known destination - the longest piece does indeed remarkable forward motion and maybe even help tempt people to think Tales is meandering or padded by comparison.

By becoming more concise with Relayer in comparison to TFTO, it seems to me as if perhaps they became slightly less proggy for it - or less exploratory, or less adventurous, or less way-out-there, or whatever you want to call it.

You know, Tales is actually my favourite Yes-album, and one could argue it to be the most progressive one as well. At least in terms of form. Taking the risk of releasing a double album with just four songs was quite a progressive statement even at that time.

Relayer then is probably their musically richest and most complex album. It is a statement to music-world: Listen, what kind of things you can do with music... has something very progressive as well.

[tormatotork]

Relayer

[Laddr]

Agree, I love Close To The Edge but Relayer... well it's just on another "level".

Relayer, the delirium of Gates, mind bending and is one of my proudest Yes Moments. I have a friend who dj's on the local public radio. I've turned him onto Yes and he really likes Relayer. He had never heard anything like it because,well, there is nothing else like it, even in Yes Discography. We listened to Sound Chaser for the first time in a while and I had forgotten how tasty that song is. He's going to play it on his show.

[Rabin105]

Fly from Here because it;'s the only album about progressing from one are to the next LMAO

[Timmo]

CTTE/Relayer.

[HoweGuitargod]

90125 is about as progressive as frank sinatra

Sinatra's Send in the Clowns was more progressive! I think CTTE and Relayer are in a tie for this poll---Relayer is a bit more avant garde

[Mr. Holland]

Sinatra's Send in the Clowns was more progressive! I think CTTE and Relayer are in a tie for this poll---Relayer is a bit more avant garde

If you would have looked at the poll you would have seen that so far TFTO is the clear winner with 132 votes against 102 for Relayer and 80 for CTTE, no tie whatsoever.

[Mr. Holland]

You know, even though my vote went to Relayer I think it's abit odd that not all Yes' studio albums were offered as a choice. Where are 'Union' 'Talk' and 'Open Your Eyes'?

[Yesed]

I wanted to say Relayer, but from fragile to CTTE is very progressive. Then again Fragile was quite prog. Maybe Ill say
the Yes Album.
From Tales to Relayer is not so progressive. Depends how you look at it.

[jaynote1]

funny that a previous poster mentioned Talk, Union, and OYE, choices i think no one has even considered....(Everything past this point is IMO)Talk can be dismissed off-hand, it always came off to me as a 'contractual obligation' album....its probably my least favorite Yes album, and one that collects dust on my cd shelf...Union, on the other hand, definitely has Prog components to it...while none are the long, sonata-style compositions that we seem to require, the odd time sigs, the poly-rhythms, the 'out-there' lyrical themes, all combine to make Union a definite contender...OYE, on the third hand, not so much...I am one of the only people on this forum that LOVES the album, and dont understand the disdain showered upon it, i think its great!...but it really doesnt delve too deeply into Prog, more towards a pop/rock album, maybe sort of with a Proggy edge to it...Great arrangements, great playing, but with less daring than some of the other albums. Certainly a good, solid, YES album, but nothing to push it out beyond Fragile, GFTO, 90125, etc...just sayin....