Description
Label Review.
2019 album. Also available on CD.
Our Overview.
Jon Anderson, the English singer and songwriter best known as the frontman for the prog rock band Yes, releases his latest solo album, ‘1000 Hands Chapter One’. The album originates from sessions for a project to have been called Uzlot (a northern English pronunciation of “us lot”) that Anderson had been recording in Big Bear, California, with English keyboardist Brian Chatton around 1990. Chatton wrote most of the music, played keyboards and also sang. Anderson asked his then Yes bandmates Chris Squire and Alan White to play on the project too. At the time, Yes were preparing for a tour and Anderson put the master tapes in his garage and, as he has recounted, gave them very little thought for many years.
In 2016, producer Michael Franklin contacted Anderson about using the tapes and finishing an album. Further recordings followed at Solar Studios in Orlando, Florida. Along with some newly written material, the final result is ‘1000 Hands’. As the new title suggests, the album was created with a stunning array of guest performers, including Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice, Rick Derringer, the Tower of Power horn section, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and pianist Chick Corea. Franklin blended their contributions into the original 1990 recordings with Anderson, Squire and White to create a seamless album that sounds like it was all recorded at the same time. “He did all of it behind my back,” says Anderson. “When he told me he was getting Chick Corea, I couldn’t believe it. But then it was like, boom! He came in and made me sound better. The whole thing was like, ‘Surprise! Surprise!’”
Tracklisting: Now / Ramalama / First Born Leaders / Activate / Makes Me Happy / Now Variartions / I Found Myself / Twice In A Lifetime / WDMCF / 1000 Hands (Come Up) / Now And Again