Stand on hills of long forgotten yesterdays

Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans - 1973

I have just spent nearly one hour and a half listening to 4 songs.
One can only wonder what would have become of progressive if it had appeared on the days of CDs, with a much more extended formats? Would Yes have released a double CD with just two songs, maybe? Probably.
It would seem that progressive rock musicians were on a sort of weird race to come up with the longest track, the longest work. And, while many times the results were mixed or decidedly bad, there are a few good exceptions and it kind of pleases me to realise that I still feel that when it works it's really a wonderful experience.
Does it work here? It's not an easy question to answer, to be honest. Leave it to Yes to be so pretentious to come up with a double album with one song per side. So, for starters, you're guaranteed to have a bit of an extenuating experience, because the songs aren't just long, but they're full of music, changing time signatures, changing rhythms, complex and varied instrumentation. And this is all really great, but it's not the kind of music that you can just play in the background as white noise.
There's something really compelling about these tracks, something that makes you (well, me, at least) have to listen and pay attention.
Of course, the album is so absurdly ambitious, that it got tons of criticism, then and now, and it's not an album for everyone.
But.
This album contains some of the most amazing, most beautiful melodies would ever write. I don't really care much about the lyrics, that deal with religion, buddhism, mysticism and all that. But the sheer beauty of the melodies is something that I have always found overpowering. I hadn't listened to this album in a very long time, and as I said the songs are really complex and change course quite a bit. So for me this was pretty much re-discovering the album, and I can't really express how much pleasure it has given me to acquaint myself again with this one.
So, coming back to the question of whether or not this one works: Absolutely yes (no pun intended). This used to be one of my favourite albums years ago, and I'm really happy to discover it still is.

• This is one of the few Yes albums in which I can listen to the high pitched voice of Jon Anderson without getting annoyed. 
• The third track, "The Ancient" used to be the one I liked the least back then. I think it's because it's the weirdest, most progressive in the sense of weird time signatures, sounding like a cross between King Crimson and Tool, at times. I find it extremely interesting and enjoyable now. 
• Still, my favourite remains "The Remembering" and it's the one I'm sharing now. I am going to be a complete heretic and post a shortened version of it (very short, like 12 minutes) that someone put on YouTube and it's done quite well. If you don't like this, you can rest assured, this album is not for you!

Cigarettes, ice-cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary

King Crimson - Starless and Bible Black - 1974

I have no idea how I had never paid attention to this album before.
I wouldn't recommend anybody who are not too familiar with KC to listen to this album as their first one, because it's a bit too improvisational, perhaps. But wow! Just Wow!!
The album was partially recorded live, although it's not hard to tell because even the live tracks were stripped of all audience sounds, and had some studio overdubs placed later. They leveraged the fact that they were increasing their onstage performance, and recorded this weird, wonderful album.
What was the side A starts with one of those demented King Crimson rockers that I love so much, called "The Great Deceiver". According to an old Rolling Stone review, it "rocks out almost as maniacally as '21st Century Schizoid Man', showing that where Yes would marvel at the world, Crimson prefers to grab it by the balls". Even after listening to some of their rockers, they always manage to catch me by surprise with tracks like this. The rest of the side contains a few slower songs, all beautiful, and a lot of improvisation, most of it amazingly good.
That's the more "normal" side. The other one has two tracks, which are purely instrumental, purely improvised, and strangely brilliant, even if I think both take a bit of time to get going.
This is an album I'm glad to have sort of "had to" listen to, because I had completely forgotten about it, and it's exactly how I like King Crimson: challenging and crazy.

• One of the tracks is called "Trio", which was intended to be a quartet, with all musicians improvising. But drummer Bill Bruford just sat there, waiting to join in, but realised they were doing just fine without him. The rest of the band viewed his decision as an active one, and included him in the writing credits.
• "The Night Watch", that would become a single from the album, is a beautiful, slow song about the painting of the same name by Rembrandt. 
• The lines that I chose for the title are from the opening track. The lyrics are supposed to be about the devil. It starts with the line "Health-food faggot with a bartered bride". I wonder how many it would offend nowadays.
• I was going to put "The Great Deceiver" here, but you know how it is with KC and their not wanting to have many songs on YouTube. So I'm putting "The Night Watch", which I actually like a lot. And I also like Rembrandt a lot.