Close To The Edge - greatest album ever recorded. I always loved Relayer and Going For The One as well along with Fragile and Tales From Topographic Oceans. Over the last 40+ years I have seen Yes live about 35 times, they are my all time favorite band.
For me, The Yes Album, but Relayer is a generally underrated album. It's actually pretty good. Fragile and Close To The Edge are in the mix too. Oddly, the one I throw on most often is Yessongs, because despite the occasionally muddy sound quality, it's a good mix of material from all the early Yes albums, and reminds me so much of the first couple times I saw them.
Relayer is my current fave. This might be heresy, but I think Pat Moraz did an incredible job on keys, more focused and integrated than Rick Wakeman’s usual work, and it makes Gates of Delirium a very lucid, structured story from start to finish. The band really came together on this song, and the different passages form tight scenes of the phases of war: raw patriotism, followed by harsh reality, followed by euphoric victory, and ultimately waking up from the delirium in Anderson’s gorgeous “Soon”. The band was locked in sync every step of the way. Wakeman will always be my favourite Yes keyboardist and he certainly had the most personality. But I wonder how things would’ve gone if Moraz had stayed with the group for a few more albums. Can you believe Relayer was his 1st and only Yes album? Incredible stuff.
Oh shit, Patrick Moraz nearly ruined the Moody Blues! I saw them live in Vegas with him on Keyboards and he completely lost self-control, too excited and too loud, tried to be a showboat, distracting from the rest of the band. Glad they dumped him, not their style. But I can see how he fit in with Yes, and he was a lot younger then. Of course he could've been on drugs in Vegas, as would be the norm there.