Album: Tales From Topographic Oceans
Artist: Yes
1973 Atlantic
CD: 82683-2 (remastered) 2 CDs

Band Members:
Jon Anderson: vocals
Steve Howe: guitars, vocals
Chris Squire: bass, vocals
Rick Wakeman: keyboards
Alan White: drums, percussion

Produced by Yes and Eddie Offord
Lyrics by Anderson/Howe
Music by Anderson/Howe/Squire/Wakeman/White

Tracks:
1. The Revealing Science of God- Dance of the Dawn (20:27)
2. The Remembering- High the Memory (20:38)
3. The Ancient- Giants Under the Sun (18:34)
4. Ritual- Nous Sommes du Soleil (21:35)

Comments: (****) This is Yes' love it or hate it album. Although the album made #1 in the UK and the US top ten, it also made the top ten in a book devoted to the top fifty worst albums in history (joining 1989's "Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe"). The album was the brainchild of Jon Anderson and is based on the shastic scriptures mentioned in a footnore of the cult book "Autobiography of Yogi", a present to Anderson from Jamie Muir of King Crimson. Many Yes fans regard this as the greatest Yes album ever made. However, it caused much controversy, even within the band itself, leading to Rick Wakeman departing the band (for the first time) after the tour to support the album.

Asked in a February 2010 interview whether the band "went too far" with Tales..., Squire answered:

You're talking to the wrong person because personally I do think we did. I would have had an album more based on the "Fragile" "Close to the Edge" model instead of that album but I was sort of outvoted. Everyone wanted to go on this one track per side sort of a vague theme, with the lyrical guiding content. I didn't think it was Yes' best move. But having said that, I think it also contributed in the long run to giving Yes such a long career because it was such a bold out of the box move. I think it gave us credibility as we carried on. And then it enabled us in the 80s to do simpler things, more a rockier side of Yes because we had already established a pattern of doing things outside of what Yes was perceived as…It's all good, it's all been a great learning curve for me.

(HP, 4 Feb 2010)