If you still consider yourself to be a Starship Trooper sailing the Topographic Oceans you’ll be pleased with this news: : YES, who are now Steve Howe, Geoff Downes, Jon Davison, Billy Sherwood & Jay Schellen, have announced a new studio album Mirror To The Sky that will be out via InsideOutMusic/Sony Music and due on May 19th 2023.
“This is a very important album for the band,” says Steve Howe, Yes’s longest serving member, master guitarist, and producer of Mirror To The Sky.
“We kept the continuity in the approach we established on The Quest, but we haven’t repeated ourselves. That was the main thing. As Yes did in the seventies from one album to another, we’re growing and moving forward. In later years, Yes often got going but then didn’t do the next thing.”
This album is demonstrative of us growing, and building again...
Steve Howe
This new album contains not one, but four tracks that last more than eight minutes, with the sweeping & dramatic title tune clocking in at just under fourteen minutes. Furthermore, the tunes, like the greatest of Yes, take the listener on a dynamically varied tour of soundscapes.
On Cut From The Stars (video shared below) a song about the International Dark Sky Park, Jay Schellen’s drummery is sacred (almost mystical.) Schellen replaced long-term drummer Alan White who sadly died in May 2022 and who was absent from the band’s Close to the Edge 50th anniversary tour (and substituted by Schellen) due to health issues. Jon (Davison’s) is also great as the perfect exemplification of the original YES vocal sound, while Steve’s guitar sparkles (of course) and Geoff’s & Billy’s crafting minds add much to the congenial nearspace chromosphere of this geosynthetic musical interlacement.
‘Mirror To The Sky’ will be available on several formats, all featuring artwork by longtime Yes artist & collaborator Roger Dean.
Pre-order now here: https://Yes-Band.lnk.to/MirrorToTheSky