Keystudio (2002)
1. Foot Prints
2. Be the One
3. Mind Drive
4. Bring Me to the Power
5. Sign Language
6. That, That Is
7. Children of the Light
In hindsight, this was a pretty clever move. When Yes managed to pull together (arguably) their classic lineup—Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman, and Alan White—for that mid-90s reunion, they gave us Keys to Ascension in 1996 and Keys to Ascension 2 in 1997. Both albums offered up live recordings from those reunion shows, which naturally got most of the attention at the time. After all, diehards were thrilled just to hear that lineup back on stage together. Tucked away almost as an afterthought were the “bonus” studio tracks—new music that, frankly, a lot of fans overlooked in all the excitement over the live material.
Thing is, those “bonus” cuts weren’t throwaways. There were seven new studio songs total, clocking in at over 70 minutes combined. In other words: a full album’s worth of classic-style Yes. The problem was, splitting them across two hybrid live/studio albums buried them a bit. It’s not hard to see now that the smarter play would have been to release a dedicated live album and a dedicated studio album from the start. Better late than never, someone eventually realized this and packaged those studio tracks on their own as Keystudio, effectively giving them the spotlight they deserved all along.
Now let’s be real: even if they’d done this properly the first time, this wasn’t going to be some blockbuster 90s comeback. By then, bands like Yes were firmly out of mainstream rotation. But listening to Keystudio now, you can’t help but think it would have made for a stronger, more coherent addition to their discography if they’d just framed it this way to begin with.
These are proper Yes epics, no apologies offered. Most of the tracks average over 10 minutes, with a couple pushing the 20-minute mark. That’s daunting for the uninitiated, but for longtime fans, it’s exactly what you want—a direct line back to the early-to-mid 70s glory years. You get all the signature elements: Howe’s nimble guitar lines (both electric and acoustic), Squire and White’s intricate rhythm interplay, Anderson’s soaring mysticism, Wakeman’s swirling keys, and enough time signature changes to keep any prog fan scribbling notes. It’s a buffet of classic Yes tropes, and they manage to serve most of them up on every track.
Of course, Yes being Yes, that formula doesn’t automatically guarantee brilliance. Fans can rattle off a few albums in their catalog that had all those elements but somehow managed to be borderline unlistenable. (I’ll leave it to you to fill in those blanks.) But that’s not the case here. The production is solid, the playing is committed, and the compositions feel like they were genuinely crafted rather than assembled from leftovers. Even the longest pieces maintain enough shape and momentum to avoid descending into self-indulgent sludge.
That’s not to say it’s perfect. Personally, I think Foot Prints, which opens the set, is the weakest link. The chorus is too repetitive, stretched thin across its nine minutes. But even there, the musicianship does a lot of the heavy lifting. And honestly, that’s the secret sauce of the whole album. You’re not going to find anything remotely “radio-friendly” here—even if someone had the nerve to hack these epics down to four-minute singles. But that’s fine. This wasn’t meant to chase airplay. It was meant to remind people what Yes could still do when they embraced the sound that made them legends in the first place. On that front, it’s a massive success.
So yes, it’s true that Keystudio isn’t technically a “proper” album in the sense of being recorded as one continuous project. But listening to it like this makes it obvious that it should have been. It holds together better than a lot of their “official” releases. I’m not even sure how easy it is to find these days, but at least anyone with the original Keys to Ascension discs can still recreate it for themselves. And they should. This is late-period Yes done right.
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