Olias...The club has spoken. Yay or Nay?

[Mr. Holland]

I think it's a good album, but by no means his best. Song of Seven, Animation and Change We Must come before it for me.

[luna65]

I really enjoy it, it's so very Jon and yet it lives up to the limits of his imagination.

[Kevin W]

I enjoy the album and think the artwork is good, even if the whole thing is very much a product of its own time.

I think Jon succeeded completely in what he set out to do and that's a good thing.

I don't think it's the best of the solo albums that were made then - my vote would go to FOOW, with the Story of I coming next but I still listen to it from time to time, having first heard it in around 1988 when I was just getting into Yes. Back in the days when you could go into a second hand vinyl shop and pick up loads of Yes related stuff for next to nothing - at least, compared to the prices today! Ah, those were the days! World Records in Leicester just up from the railway station. Spend loads of my first few wage packets in that shop!

Ash if you're reading this - were you in Leicester back then and if so do you remember World Records?

[gbh90125]

fabulous album - the best of the co-ordinated solo releases by some distance. It's a beautiful record.

And the cover and illustrations are streets ahead of RD, sorry.

[Homemade Parachute]

I love every inch of it, every fold out sleeve, every bit of texture and quirky typography… and the cover's good too! I like it for maybe the same reasons a lot of people don't — it doesn't quite sound like Yes, it's not a virtuoso musician (but it *is* a virtuoso performance, I think), and a Dean cover would have spoiled it, as that brand has already been established (and for the same reasons, I think it was a mistake for Steve to go with Roger on the solo albums). I can simultaneously understand everyone to hears it as new age twaddle, and yet hear it easily avoiding that crevasse, too. This might sound weird, but I actually think it's one of the *least* pretentious albums in my collection — it's both a struggle for an individual to find the right sounds all on his own, without the backing band, and yet absolutely confident in its path. (I might be a little drunk right now, except no, I've just shovelled two or three feet of snow off the in-laws front and back lanes, so I'm just high on my own endorphins…)

So it's a 12/10 from me, just one of those few spot-on, perfect albums in my repertoire.

[Davy]

This album seems to me like it would have been 10 times better if Squire, Howe, and/or White had contributed. Unlike Fish Out of Water which sounds complete. Olias and some of Steve and Rick's solo albums showed me just how special it is when these guys got together and what happened musically. It's weird how natural and complete Yes music sounds, but when most the guys went solo, the music wasn't even close. Olias is close, but with the guys involved, it could have been so much better. A great example of an uninhibited/edited/produced Jon. His best solo work for sure.

Yep to all of that .

[kkleinschmidt]

I love listening to it while flying with noise cancelling headphones. Great album...

K-shmitty on his way to see Betsy!!!

[/QUOTE]

Close! More like B+K going somewhere on vacation together...

[Somis Sound]

This album seems to me like it would have been 10 times better if Squire, Howe, and/or White had contributed. Unlike Fish Out of Water which sounds complete. Olias and some of Steve and Rick's solo albums showed me just how special it is when these guys got together and what happened musically. It's weird how natural and complete Yes music sounds, but when most the guys went solo, the music wasn't even close. Olias is close, but with the guys involved, it could have been so much better. A great example of an uninhibited/edited/produced Jon. His best solo work for sure.

[Susanne]

I love the album, too. I also like the cover. The music always lifts me (even further, if I am already at the top.) It's soft and embracing but, at the same time, insanely powerful. It underpins my floaty-feeling with pure horizontality and joy. (That looks ridiculous when I write it down, but inside my head it translates to an amazing experience.)

[Gilly Goodness]

I love listening to it while flying with noise cancelling headphones. Great album...[/QUOTE]





K-shmitty on his way to see Betsy!!!

[kkleinschmidt]

I originally purchased Olias of Sunhillow from the cutout bin of a record store in Northgate Mall for $0.99 plus tax (and the cover wasn't even cutout). I totally enjoyed everything about it and still do. I love listening to it while flying with noise cancelling headphones. Great album...

[Soundwaveseeker]

The cover is fine by me, though it wouldn't have suffered from a Roger Dean cover. That would have fit the music. But the album cover it has also fits the music - giving it a mystical, Dark Crystal-like image. The storybook-type visuals of the gatefold pages, very cool. Olias is spacey, sure, but also very mythical and ancient. Not music from another planet, but music from maybe another planet 18, 000 years ago.

Interesting that, of all the Yessolo albums of 1975/6, only Steve Howe's Beginnings has a Dean cover, and seems Howe to be the one guy championing Roger Deam covers the most. Sometimes you get the vibe that the other Yes members could take or leave having a Dean album cover. Anderson's could have had one, but the Dark Crystal cover works for me well enough. I also think that a Dean cover would have suited Song Of Seven if Anderson had wanted to make a statement like "I'm the real Yes, follow me!". A Dean cover would had more fans in tune with Jon as a solo artist after the split in 1980.

I didn't mind the cover to Animation, minimalistic computer images are ok by me for the most part.

[Olorin]

__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _____





Jon Anderson: Olias Of Sunhillow - Album Of The Week Club review

Jon Anderson's Olias Of Sunhillow is the tale of an alien race that’s forced to flee to a new world in the wake of a volcanic catastrophe

By Classic Rock Magazine
( Classic Rock )





....
Only Accrington’s most famous cosmic pixie could get away with a song (Moon Ra) that uses of the lines: ‘Worlds that lie between/Are simply seconds of words we do not mean/Cast a pastel sky/Or simply wonder until the day you die’, but be prepared to leave such qualms at the door because Olias Of Sunhillow is beautiful, uplifting, intoxicating and wholly irresistible.
....

I don't know why it is that music critics, and I suppose journalists in general, feel the need to comment, and thereby pass some sort of judgment, on a person's physical appearance. At best, it's lazy journalism. At worst, it's, well, fill in the blank with the appropriate adjective.

Sure, Jon Anderson is short. And he has a high voice for a guy. And his sensibilities are not those of the typical person. Why does this have to continually get him referred to as a pixie, elfin, etc.? This seems to be a good example of what nowadays is referred to as a micro-aggression. It also seems like a subtle or not so subtle attempt to diminish the man's achievements, not to mention his "manliness," whatever that means, by marginalizing him as "other." What would be wrong with writing an article and simply referring to him as one of the most talented and unique singers in all of popular music? Or saying he's a talentless hack, if that's your opinion, LOL.

[True]

The artwork itself is not my favorite of Yes-related albums, but it did not bother me - but I really enjoyed the cover for this record ,as it had that "book" built into the album cover. So it was great to play the record and read through the book pages and the artwork on each page. I was very happy and surprised that they re-issued the vinyl version, complete with the book, a few years ago. My original vinyl version was pretty worn and the cover faded.
Now if they would re-issue the vinyl of Yessongs, I can replace that very worn and faded copy in my library.

Now that I think of it, none of the Anderson solo records had covers which I loved. I'm glad that he mostly tried to do something that didn't look like a Yes album cover, but none of the covers really looked great to me. I thought the Anderson Stolt cover was very different and looked good, I guess.

[Old Frothingslosh]

I Like the album and artwork as well. It comes in at Forum for me as I think Animation is his best, most solid solo piece of work