Sure, it's a really great song and the lyrics are more straightforward than most Anderson scrawlings. The first time I heasr it I thought of Ernest Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic in 1914-16; they wanted to cross the continent through hundreds of miles of almost completely uncharted ice (an almost desperate idea!). The ship froze in about thirty miles from the coast, and they drifted, locked in the ice, had to abandon ship and drag everything in sleds and open boats...really far out, but Shackleton was an inspiring leader and no one died though the odds against them were immeasurable.
The way they explore different moods here - the "hallucination" section! - is just amazing, and so is the musicianship. One reason why it's rather unknown even with hardcore Yes fans is that the band have hardly ever perfomed it live, once Bill Bruford left the year after the album, It's very much in his style of drumming - jazzy, ultra-syncopated, lots of phased beats and empty spaces.
Sure, it's a really great song and the lyrics are more straightforward than most Anderson scrawlings. The first time I heasr it I thought of Ernest Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic in 1914-16; they wanted to cross the continent through hundreds of miles of almost completely uncharted ice (an almost desperate idea!). The ship froze in about thirty miles from the coast, and they drifted, locked in the ice, had to abandon ship and drag everything in sleds and open boats...really far out, but Shackleton was an inspiring leader and no one died though the odds against them were immeasurable.
The way they explore different moods here - the "hallucination" section! - is just amazing, and so is the musicianship. One reason why it's rather unknown even with hardcore Yes fans is that the band have hardly ever perfomed it live, once Bill Bruford left the year after the album, It's very much in his style of drumming - jazzy, ultra-syncopated, lots of phased beats and empty spaces.