Arc Of Life

Arc Of Life
(Frontiers)
8/10
By Paul Davies

Comprising three members of the current touring Yes line-up, a guitarist who has featured on past Yes albums, plus the Sound Of Contact keyboard player, Arc Of Life is another interesting amalgam of progressive musicians that pops up every now again to draw in the curious.

The unmistakable purity of voice of former Glass Hammer and current Yes singer Jon Davison elevates these ten well-crafted progressive/AOR compositions. And the high level of musicianship expected from all the players involved doesn't disappoint either.

Imbued with the precision playing and tricky sounding time signatures one would expect from musicians of this high calibre, such as on the enjoyably experimental Talking With Siri, it’s an album replete with memorable and upbeat tunes - You Make It Real; Until Further Notice; Just In Sight; There For We Are, and the on-topic Locked Down - that stick around and make themselves impressively at home on any medium the listener chooses to play them on.

Not quite as AOR sounding as the original Asia line-up, nor as prog-poppy as the current DBA Halcyon Hymns release, AOL fall somewhere inside the cracks between these genres which they artfully widen by furrowing their own sonic pathway aided by adventurous production techniques.

This debut should satisfy the followers of the Yes hybrid sound and also pull in the general and inquisitive listener to this excellent debut effort by this spin-off super-grouping of learned musicians.