Heaven & Earth (Yes album)
| Heaven & Earth | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Yes | ||||
| Released | 16 July 2014 | |||
| Recorded | 6 January–14 March 2014 | |||
| Studio | Neptune Studios, Los Angeles, California | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock | |||
| Length | 51:29 | |||
| Label | Frontiers | |||
| Producer | Roy Thomas Baker | |||
| Yes chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 53/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| The Guardian | |
| Record Collector | |
| The Quietus | (Mixed) |
Heaven & Earth is the twenty-first studio album from the English progressive rock band Yes, first released on 16 July 2014 on Frontiers Records. It is their first album with singer Jon Davison in the band's line-up, and the final studio album to feature original bassist Chris Squire before his death in 2015.
It was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, who first worked with the band on recording sessions in 1979, and mixed by then former member Billy Sherwood. Upon its release, Heaven & Earth peaked at number 20 in the UK, the band's highest chart performance since their 1994 album Talk. It also entered the U.S. chart at number 26.
About the name of the album, guitarist Steve Howe stated, "In a way, the parallel of saying ‘Heaven And Earth’ is the same as saying good and bad, yin and yang, up and down, left and right. They’re two extremes, but I think the way Roger and I liked it was that in fact the Earth is a physical place where you can measure stuff and you can do quantum physics. [...] But Heaven is an unknown place of no particular destination as far as anybody knows. And yet it doesn’t matter whether you’re totally tied up in a religious belief or whether you’re spiritual in a way. That doesn’t require religious commitment — it just requires awareness to the fact that there’s obviously something out there that we don’t know about. [...] it sums up the dualistic quality of the known and the unknown and the more you look at the known the more you see that there’s even more unknown than you knew before."
From 6 January to 14 March 2014, the band recorded a new album, their first with new lead singer Davison, in the Los Angeles area with producer Roy Thomas Baker. This recording is Yes' first association with Baker since their aborted recording sessions in Paris in 1979, something bassist Chris Squire described as "a very enjoyable experience" and Baker someone "really good to work with". In January 2014, the band's Facebook page released images of the band rehearsing in the studio with Baker. On 7 March 2014, Downes tweeted that he had completed keyboards for the album.
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