The Yes Album CD

Yes: Jon Anderson (vocals, percussion); Steve Howe (acoustic & electric guitars, vachalia, background vocals); Tony Kaye (piano, organ, Moog synthesizer); Chris Squire (bass, background vocals); Bill Bruford (drums, percussion).
Additional personnel: Colin Goldring (recorder).
Recorded at Advision Studios, London, England in Autumn 1970. Originally released on Atlantic (8283).
All tracks have been digitally remastered.
Personnel: Steve Howe (vocals, guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Chris Squire (vocals, bass guitar); Jon Anderson (vocals, percussion); Colin Goldring (recorder); Tony Kaye (piano, organ, keyboards, synthesizer, Moog synthesizer); Bill Bruford (drums, percussion).
Recording information: Lyceum, London, England.
Photographers: Phil Franks; Barry Wentzell.
Unknown Contributor Roles: Steve Howe; Brian Lane .
The album that first gave shape to the established Yes sound, build around science-fiction concepts, folk melodies, and soaring organ, guitar, and vocal showpieces. "Your Move" actually made the U.S. charts as a single, and "Starship Trooper," "Perpetual Change," and "Yours Is No Disgrace" became much-loved parts of the band's concert repertory for many tours to come. Remastered in 1995, with significantly improved sound. ~ Bruce Eder
With THE YES ALBUM, Yes began an important new chapter in its career and defined much of what the next decade would bring. They had left behind not only their original guitarist, Peter Banks, but also the covers of 1960s tunes by the likes of the Byrds and the Beatles. The arrival of the more hard-edged Steve Howe signaled the group's ascent into full-blown progressive-rock mode, a style whose parameters Yes helped craft with this recording. Though Rick Wakeman and his classical-influenced arsenal of keyboards had not yet come aboard, Tony Kaye's roiling Hammond organ and Chris Squire's busy bass lines perfectly interacted with Howe's idiosyncratic playing to create a uniquely fugue-like sound, as Bill Bruford's polyrhythms and Jon Anderson's angelic voice simultaneously kept things on a more abstract and ethereal plane than almost anything that had been labeled "rock" up to that point. "Starship Trooper" and "Yours Is No Disgrace" would become hallmarks of prog rock and launch a thousand pale imitations by third-string art-rockers for decades to come.
With THE YES ALBUM, Yes began an important new chapter in their career and defined much of what the next decade would bring. They had left behind not only their original guitarist, Peter Banks, but also the covers of 1960s tunes by the likes of the Byrds and the Beatles. The arrival of the more hard-edged Steve Howe signaled the group's ascent into full-blown progressive-rock mode, a style whose parameters Yes helped craft with this recording. Though Rick Wakeman and his classical-influenced arsenal of keyboards had not yet come aboard, Tony Kaye's roiling Hammond organ and Chris Squire's busy bass lines perfectly interacted with Howe's idiosyncratic playing to create a uniquely fugue-like sound, as Bill Bruford's polyrhythms and Jon Anderson's angelic voice simultaneously kept things on a more abstract and ethereal plane than almost anything that had been labeled "rock" up to that point. "Starship Trooper" and "Yours Is No Disgrace" would become hallmarks of prog rock and launch a thousand pale imitations by third-string art-rockers for decades to come.