Wiki
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Release Date
October 1974
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Length
3 tracks
Relayer is the seventh studio album by the progressive rock band Yes. Recorded and released in 1974, it is the only Yes studio album to feature Patrick Moraz, who replaced keyboardist Rick Wakeman earlier in the year.
History
After the ambitious double-concept album Tales from Topographic Oceans, Rick Wakeman left Yes to resume his solo career. The band auditioned several prospective replacements, the closest contender being the Greek keyboardist Vangelis. He did not become a member of Yes, but these auditions paved the way for several future collaborations between Vangelis and Jon Anderson. The band finally chose Swiss-born Patrick Moraz as a replacement while this album was well into production. The album title comes from the lyrics of "The Remembering (High The Memory)" from Tales from Topographic Oceans.
As with most of Yes' previous albums, Relayer features artwork by Roger Dean. The CD release features two additional paintings by Dean.
Relayer has the same song format as 1972's Close to the Edge—a long epic on the first side, and two nine-minute pieces on the second—but employs a radically different musical style. "The Gates of Delirium" is a dense, 22-minute piece that was inspired by Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. It features lengthy improvisations by each member of the band, sometimes clashing intentionally with one another. Featuring lyrics about the futility of war, it remains one of the most musically aggressive songs ever produced by the band. The final section, in which the drive of the previous sixteen minutes is suddenly replaced by a gentle melody and a lyrical prayer for peace, was released as a U.S. single under the title "Soon" in early 1975. "Sound Chaser" is a jazzy, mostly instrumental piece that echoes King Crimson. "To Be Over" is the gentlest piece on the album, and features complex, melodic arrangements of guitar and electric sitar.
The critical reaction to Relayer, coming after a predecessor that many critics felt was pretentious and long-winded, was mixed. However, it was still a commercial success, with many observers later considering it vastly underrated. No doubt, many were surprised at the sudden departure in terms of sound which Yes had made on this disc. The atmosphere and sonic quality are very different from Close To The Edge or most of Tales From Topographic Oceans (the one track on that album which could be said to point towards Relayer is The Ancient with its free-form, spinning rhythms, Arabic-tinged percussion and its frantic, dramatic guitar work.)
The vocals on Relayer are more dramatic, emotionally charged with aggression, and the guitar has stepped up to the front (in consequence of Wakeman's sudden departure), with a new hard edge. "Gates of Delirium" is "all Telecaster" according to Howe (The Steve Howe Guitar Collection, 1994, p.43); before which he had generally and famously used Gibson. On "To Be Over" and the last parts of "Gates of Delirium" a pedal steel guitar is used (Steve Howe G.C. p.47). Squire's bass lines and White's drumming throughout the album are of great dynamic range and complexity. Bill Martin (in his book The Music of Yes) recalls how, as a teenager, he saw the band performing live in Atlanta in late 1974. As they opened with "Sound Chaser," then still-unreleased and very unlike anything they had previously recorded, Martin's first thought was that the band had gone crazy.
Relayer was remastered and reissued on Rhino Records in 2003 with three bonus tracks, including a complete studio run-through of Gates of Delirium with partly different or improvised lyrics. While most of the keyboards are not yet present, and some of the structure of the song is different, the complex rhythm track for the "battle" section has the same layout as in the finished version.
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