Magnification

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Magnification
Studio album by Yes

Publication
(s)

2001

Label (s) Eagle Records ( UK )
Beyond Music ( USA )

Format (s)

CD

Genre (s)

Pop, AOR , art rock

Title (number)

11

running time

60:32

occupation

production

Yes and Tim Weidner

Studio (s)

Sound Design Studios, Santa Barbara , California

chronology
Keysstudio
(Compilation, 2001)
House of Yes - Live from House of Blues
(Live album 2000)
The Ladder
(Studio album 1999) 		Magnification In a Word: Yes
(compilation 2002)
The Word Is Live
(compilation 2005)
Fly from Here
(studio album 2011)

Magnification is the twentieth studio album by the progressive rock band Yes , released in 2001. After Time and a Word (1970), it is the second album that Yes recorded with an orchestra.

Emergence

After keyboardist Igor Khoroshev left , the four remaining members of Yes, Jon Anderson , Steve Howe , Chris Squire and Alan White decided , at Howe's suggestion, to take advantage of the situation and replace the keyboards with an orchestra on their next album. The band then contacted the film music composer Larry Groupé as co-author, arranger and conductor for their next album. Groupé was previously best known for his work on Character Assassination - Beyond Morality . Tim Weidner, who had already worked on Steve Howe's solo album Turbulence ten years earlier, was hired as the producer .

In February 2001 the band went to the studio (Sound Design Studios, Santa Barbara , California ) to work together on the pieces for the new album. First four demos were recorded, for which Groupé wrote first orchestral parts. The band liked them so much that Groupé was increasingly involved in the creative process as the work progressed.

In the absence of a keyboardist, the keyboard instruments were operated by Alan White, Chris Squire and Steve Howe.

Groupé had regularly visited the band in the studio and gradually wrote the orchestral parts. Yes had left more space for the orchestra where keyboard solos would otherwise have been heard. Groupé played the music with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, with which he had previously worked. In May, the work was largely completed. The album was then at least partially mixed in the studio of former Yes singer and producer Trevor Horn in Los Angeles . This work was finished in August.

Although the pieces are clearly delimited from one another in terms of composition, Groupé composed orchestral transitions in some places. This led Jon Anderson to say they were working on a 60-minute piece. However, this was not the case.

Track list

  1. Magnification - 7:16
  2. Spirit Of Survival - 6:02
  3. Don't Go - 4:27
  4. Give Love Each Day - 7:44 am
  5. Can You Imagine - 2:59
  6. We Agree - 6:30
  7. Soft as a Dove - 2:17
  8. Dreamtime 10:46
  9. In The Presence Of - 10:24
    1. Deeper
    2. Death of Ego
    3. True beginner
    4. Turn around and remember
  10. Time Is Time - 2:09

Remarks:

  • All songs were written by Jon Anderson , Chris Squire , Steve Howe and Alan White . Like the arrangements, the orchestral music comes from Larry Groupé, who also conducted the orchestra.
  • Can You Imagine is from 1981 from the XYZ sessions with Chris Squire, Alan White and Jimmy Page , it was previously called And (Do) You Believe It? or Can You See or Unknown Song # 1 became known. The version on Magnification is the first Yes song with Squire as lead singer , who is also considered the main author of the song.
  • In The Presence of is based on a song idea by White, to which Anderson contributed the melody and lyrics.
  • Time Is Time was mainly written by Anderson.
  • In the US, three different versions of the album were sold by three different dealers. Each of these versions included a bonus CD. All featured an orchestral version of Long Distance Runaround from the Yes album Fragile , the first song was always a different one: a live version of Ritual from the album Tales from Topographic Oceans (28:05, at Best Buy), a live version from The Gates of Delirium from the album Relayer (22:43, on FYE / Trans World), a live version of Close to the Edge from the album Close to the Edge (20:26, on Borders). All recordings were from a concert on the Masterworks tour on July 19, 2000 in Holmdel , New Jersey .

Cover

The cover was designed by Bob Cesca, based on a Jon Anderson story called The Machine , which Anderson published online.

Chart successes

Magnification (Eagle 189EAG) reached number 71 in the UK and number 186 in the American charts . The album was released on September 11, 2001, the day of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington .

Re-releases

2002

In 2002 the album was re-released in a limited edition with different packaging and a bonus CD. The second CD contains three live recordings and a CD-ROM track with an interview, a video for Don't Go and a live video of The Gates of Delirium from the Yes album Relayer .

  1. Deeper (In the Presence of) (Live) - 11:18
  2. The Gates of Delirium (Live) - 23:47
  3. Magnification (Live) - 7:44
  4. CD-ROM track:
    1. Jon Anderson video interview
    2. Don't Go (Single Video)
    3. The Gates of Delirium (Live Video)

2004

Two years later the album was re-released, this time with another bonus CD. This contained further live recordings:

  1. Close to the Edge (Live) - 20:04
  2. Long Distance Runaround (Live) - 3:44
  3. Gates of Delirium / Soon (Live) - 10:41 pm

The concert recordings on both bonus CDs came from the Magnification tour (July 22, 2001 - December 13, 2001, 69 concerts). In addition to Anderson, Howe, Squire and White, the tour keyboardist Tom Brislin and the European Festival Orchestra can be heard on the Direction by Wilhelm Keitel . All recordings can also be found on the DVD Symphonic Live .

Review

In an interview from October 2003, guitarist Steve Howe expressed himself very critically about Magnification . His guitar had been pushed too far to the edge by the orchestra, and he had less input than the other three musicians. Good ideas, such as the one to play some pieces without an orchestra or without vocals, were subsequently rejected. On the whole, the album was not brave enough.

Jon Anderson complained in a 2005 interview with Billboard magazine that the attempt to gain new audiences with a more pop-rock-oriented album - Magnification - had failed.

live

  • Some of Magnification's pieces can be heard on Songs from Tsongas , Live at Montreux 2003 and Symphonic Live .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anderson's story The Machine on his personal website ( Memento of the original from May 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / jonanderson.com
  2. ↑ Interview with Steve Howe on the Yescography website
  3. ↑ Hirnfick 2.0: The Rehabilitation of an Institution: Yes - Magnification. January 3, 2011, accessed January 5, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Nik Brückner: Baby Blue Pages: Review of Magnification . March 10, 2006, accessed on January 5, 2011 : “We wanted to really break into a bigger audience again and I thought that album was perfect for breaking into a newer audience. But, unfortunately there wasn't the pop song, the radio song that everybody wanted. [...] You look at it 6 months later and wish we'd've thought about maybe making a more accessible song in the commercial sense. "

Sources and web links