Short Stories (Jon and Vangelis album)
| Short Stories | ||||
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Album cover
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| Studio album by Jon and Vangelis | ||||
| Released | January 1980 | |||
| Recorded | February 1979 (original sessions), September–October 1979 (post-production) | |||
| Studio |
Nemo Studios (London, England) |
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| Genre | Electronic music | |||
| Length | 53:12 | |||
| Label | Polydor | |||
| Producer | Vangelis | |||
| Jon and Vangelis chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Short Stories | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |    |
| Smash Hits | 3/10 |
Short Stories is the debut album by Jon and Vangelis, the collaborative effort between Jon Anderson of the prog rock band Yes and electronic music pioneer Vangelis. This was not the first time that the two had worked together: Vangelis had auditioned to be Rick Wakeman's replacement in Yes in 1974, but the role was given to Patrick Moraz. In 1975, Jon Anderson sang on "So Long Ago So Clear" from Heaven and Hell.
Putting overdubs aside, the cuts on Short Stories were all improvised one-take tape recordings tracked in 1979, with the album's working title Spont. [Spontaneous] Music based on this process. Vangelis said that the album may have taken a total of only two and a half non-consecutive weeks to produce, and "just four days to start with." Both Anderson and Vangelis wanted to work together just to have a fun time, the former explaining, "I won't say effortless, but the enjoyment of making music without prior conceptions, without deciding what it's going to be. Just do it."Sounds writer John Gill, who interviewed the pair for an article regarding how Short Stories was made, said that the two apparently wanted to make an album that would be out of the styles they had commonly been labeled under by both the press and consumers with past releases.Short Stories garners numerous elements of classical, pop, rock and folk.
Despite its commercial performance, critical response to Short Stories, both upon release and in retrospect, has been mixed. A Smash Hits journalist put the blame entirely on Anderson for making the album "entirely unlistenable"; he jokingly described his lyrics as "the kind of "cosmic" drivel that gets hippies a bad name", and felt that the "tuneless" melodies were written by just coming up with notes and pitches at random. In a retrospective review, AllMusic reviewer Dave Connolly called the record "underwhelming", saying that it had very few "nearly memorable moments"; he criticized it for being more focused on melody than making the arrangements less "amorphous" and "paper-thin", an issue also present on the last Yes album Anderson sang on before working on Short Stories, Tormato.
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