If keyboardist/composer Rick Wakeman had not decided to make such a lavish and expensive production of his latest venture, he might have come up with something that could make me forgive even his most clumsy and pretentious attempts with Yes. Unfortunately, Journey is not nearly so interesting an adaptation of Jules Verne's Scandinavian-volcano novel as the 1959 cinematic throwaway which featured Pat Boone and James Mason. The directors of the film had enough sense, as I remember, to discourage Boone from singing; Wakeman should have had as much here. The principal flaws in his album — the music of which often sounds engaging, like a Viking saga's B-movie soundtrack—are the voices of David Hemmings, the narrator, and the English Chamber Choir, who serve as a semi-Wagnerian chorus. One of the best things about Yes has always been its excellent pop vocals, but the Chamber Choir sounds like an unrehearsed high school choral group. This reduces whatever interesting music might be present to a nerve-wracking series of interludes between the Choir's appearances and Hemmings's vain attempts to match Laurence Olivier's diction. (RS 169)

DAVE MARSH