New YES album "The Quest" out 1 Oct

[Top Cat]

This is ALL Jon Anderson's fault...he must've put some New Age chant against Classic Yes , and made them do this unwittingly.

I have a good mind to burn my vinyl copy in protest, oh wait, vinyl is toxic when burned, right?
I'll just have to force myself to listen to it then..

[Jacob Holm-Lupo]

This is so weird and just so quintessentially latter-day Yes.

100%

[Scrotum Scissor]

The second single has dropped with another ice themed motif and a more melodic vocal approach: https://youtu.be/tidOSuNxm8I

Thank you for that very fine song/tune. It captures everything that was always unequivocally fantastic about the "genre" and renders it all the more attractive to newcomers or critics who still aren't intelligent or refined enough to "get it" due to its extreme inner complexities and nuances and overall grand sophistication and tiny micro-prick.

[Proglodite]

The Monkman piece was released on CD by Vocalion - though looks like all the copies got scarfed up (have to check to see if I still have it!). To the casual music fan, it may be obscure...but to anyone with an interest in soundtrack music, library music or early '70s stuff in general would likely have run across it at some point. --Peter

[Gizmotron]

Forgive me if this has been covered already (I cannot bear to read 14 pages), but does any merchant have the ART BOOK version that doesn’t cost $19-30 in shipping alone?

(Normally Amazon would be a good option but they don’t seem to have clear labeling with the two packages that show up.)

[the winter tree]

I actually liked the song, though it kind of meanders along at the end. But this is most certainly lifted wholesale from Francis Monkman. I wouldn't have a problem with it if Francis was credited. It just seems very sleazy to try to sell this off as an original piece of music. Downes is a very prolific composer. I wouldn't have expected this from him. Very disturbing.

[Dan Roth]

Geoff Downes has chimed in on his Twitter:

1) In regards to recent messages, the original idea for The Ice Bridge track appears on a 1977 showreel of mine at a time when I was composing jingles and library music for a West End music production company.

2) Over the last couple of years, I have been looking at some of these early ideas, and felt that this one was suitable for further development. GD

[the winter tree]

^ So Monkman ripped him off???

[Dan Roth]

^ So Monkman ripped him off???

Could be. Monkman ripped off Vangelis’ “Pulstar” on the same record, and the credit on the Energism record indicates that Monkman composed this song:

[the winter tree]

I will feel much better about this if Downes did indeed compose this. I did seem too blatant...

[Jacob Holm-Lupo]

Geoff Downes has chimed in on his Twitter:

1) In regards to recent messages, the original idea for The Ice Bridge track appears on a 1977 showreel of mine at a time when I was composing jingles and library music for a West End music production company.

2) Over the last couple of years, I have been looking at some of these early ideas, and felt that this one was suitable for further development. GD

Ooh, the plot thickens!

[Jacob Holm-Lupo]

This will of course be pure speculation, but I think the more likely explanation is that the piece has been mis-attributed to Monkman by a lazy label employee. Library music LPs often contain music by different artists, but bunched together under some sort of «theme». And those labels are often quite exploitative. Correct attribution is likely not a top priority.

[timmy]

I wasn't going to purchase this new Yes record after getting burned for $60+ US with "Heaven and Earth". I purchased the regular H&E version along with the Japanese H&E version with the "bonus" track. I have since deleted all versions from my media server.

Please God let this album be a good album.

[Wil]

I'm going to assume that Downes was also composing for Bruton. Maybe he collaborated with Monkman, maybe shared some ideas, etc. Or maybe he ripped him off and stole away into the night, only to be caught out 44 years later. I guess whether you think he has or hasn't done anything untoward depends on how much you delight at seeing people fall. I still think the idea that he trawled through what he thought were old, obscure library albums that nobody knew about, to pilfer ideas just a bit ridiculous. You'd have to be exceptionally naive to think you could get away with that nowadays.

[Dan Roth]

On a slight tangent, I found some of the library music that Downes created and you can hear some themes that later wound up in some Asia classics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GicEbHe0eI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNjj7qsJjYc

[Mister Triscuits]

This will of course be pure speculation, but I think the more likely explanation is that the piece has been mis-attributed to Monkman by a lazy label employee. Library music LPs often contain music by different artists, but bunched together under some sort of «theme». And those labels are often quite exploitative. Correct attribution is likely not a top priority.

It wasn't just a random piece, it was a whole album made by Monkman and first published by Bruton Music. It was later commercially released on Klaus Schulze's Innovative Communications label as Monkman's first solo album.

[ThomasKDye]

It wasn't just a random piece, it was a whole album made by Monkman and first published by Bruton Music. It was later commercially released on Klaus Schulze's Innovative Communications label as Monkman's first solo album.

That doesn't mean that Monkman made it out of whole cloth and it was a passionate pursuit on his part. There have been several artists who've had work released under their name that was just a haphazard collection of what's assumed to be their works.

This is a plausible order of events as I see it:

1977 - Geoff Downes creates the show reel with the original piece of music on it. It gets shopped around and Monkman either hears it or is tasked to improve on it. Thinking it nothing but a library piece of fluff that was legitimately bought (he certainly was not aware a future "superstar" wrote it!), he does take it and improve on it (there are bits on the Monkman piece that DO NOT appear on "The Ice Bridge," despite what people say). Bruton Music approves of it, buys it, publishes it under their name, and the music flies around the TV show circuit, mostly unattributed but "published" as by Monkman. Downes himself is too busy being killed by the Radio Star and being Dramatic in the Heat of the Asiatic Moment to really pay attention or care.

Fast forward to 2019 - Downes gets nostalgic for his old stuff (despite the snark on here, people do actually listen to their old material once in a while), rediscovers his show reel, figuring that, since he really did write it in the first place, it was his, and starts working on it. Davison puts lyrics on it, and Howe and White, who probably were not spending their time watching "Sale of the Century" or painstakingly listening to BBC News music cues, add their bits, along with Sherwood, who would likely never have heard it at all.

Since Monkman did apparently lift a Vangelis piece, and Downes is really, REALLY unlikely to go "Bwahaha! They'll never notice!!!", I think this is a fairly close approximation of what may have happened. Monkman's version is much more embellished and busy (the one lick and the orchestral hits are the same, but he definitely added his own touch to it) and again, adds parts that did not appear in "The Ice Bridge." This is library music meant to be used commercially, and just because it appeared on a "Monkman solo album" doesn't mean it was Monkman cloistered away in a country studio, making his deeply personal magnum opus. An exec said, "This is a Monkman album," Monkman may have said "yeah, sure, I need the money, the music biz sucks, that 801 Live album didn't exactly pave my road with gold" and took the royalties, and then nothing was thought about it ever again.

Music-writing can be difficult; I still stuggle with Southern Empire and United Progressive Fraternity sharing material but counting it as their own, or Martin Orford using a whole bit from IQ's Frequency because, dammit, it was his and he'll do what he wants. I believe that Downes created the piece, didn't really follow the music's commercial trajectory once he let it go, and then went back to the source thinking, "Oh, well, this is mine. Might as well make something of it!"

[Jacob Holm-Lupo]

This is a plausible order of events as I see it:

I agree - this is the most likely approximation of what happened. IC probably approached Monkman either saying - hey this library music of yours, why don't we release it as a solo album, or they said: Francis, do you have some material for a solo album, and Francis was like, well it just so happens ...

And honestly, through a long career it might become fuzzy who exactly wrote what. If you write library music and such, like these two gentlemen, you'll have reams and reams of tape, some may be all you, some may be collabs, some may be ... someone else's tape, but in the end, who remembers?

I have hundreds of tapes, dictaphone cassettes, minidiscs and whatnot with ideas, sketches, whole pieces. If I go back and listen to that stuff, as often as not I'll have no recollection of making the music, I only know I did because it says so on the tin. Not too long ago I found a piece I couldn't remember, and had to ask another musician I worked with at the time whether it was his or mine. Neither of us remembered clearly. So, jus' sayin'.

[Interstellar]

If Downes' explanation doesn't convince people, the band can still use the kind of clarification Jon Anderson made about his recent release Sunlight : "This is not a Yes album, it's library music !"

[Scrotum Scissor]

It was Monkman's fault, no doubt.

[jamesmanzi]

Geoff Downes has chimed in on his Twitter:

1) In regards to recent messages, the original idea for The Ice Bridge track appears on a 1977 showreel of mine at a time when I was composing jingles and library music for a West End music production company.

2) Over the last couple of years, I have been looking at some of these early ideas, and felt that this one was suitable for further development. GD

Interesting. More interesting will be if he addresses why the piece is in various places on the internet, including a licensed music site, credited to Francis Monkman.

[dpt3]

This is ALL Jon Anderson's fault...he must've put some New Age chant against Classic Yes , and made them do this unwittingly.

Indeed. I suspect "Go Screw Yourself" was some sort of fourth dimensional Elvish curse spell.

[Splicer]

This is a plausible order of events as I see it

Brilliant, Holmes. That is a very plausible explanation.

[Top Cat]

Indeed. I suspect "Go Screw Yourself" was some sort of fourth dimensional Elvish curse spell.

exactly..
I think you might've had a typo and meant elfish, because elf like characteristics have been attributed to Jon here in the past.
Also, I believe Elvis has left the building. lol

[LASERCD]

Forgive me if this has been covered already (I cannot bear to read 14 pages), but does any merchant have the ART BOOK version that doesn’t cost $19-30 in shipping alone?

(Normally Amazon would be a good option but they don’t seem to have clear labeling with the two packages that show up.)

https://www.lasercd.com/cd/quest-2cdblu-ray-artbook