It’s as if Jon Anderson, former leader of YES and Roine Stolt, guitarist extraordinaire for Flower Kings and Transatlantic met in some sort of hot tub time machine or tele-transporting phone booth like in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and created the music for this release. Well although it didn’t exactly happen that way the two masters did exchange musical ideas while being world’s apart. And the result, The Invention of Knowledge, 
harkens back to a YES masterpiece from yesteryear, “Tales from Topographic Oceans,” with a healthy dose of Swedish progressive that only Roine Stolt can provide.
This 3 suite, 9 track performance reflects an attitude sorely lost on today’s musicians. According to Stolt, “It was like going back to the 70’s in one way. Because there were no rules. We were drawing inspiration from all sorts of musical heritages across the world.” Besides the 2 acknowledged progressive rock legends the musicians include Jonas Reinhold on bass; Felix Lehrmann on drums, both from Flower Kings; and Tom Brislin, who toured with YES on their 2001 Symphonic World Tour, on keyboards.
The song titles themselves suggest Anderson penned lyrics; “We Are Truth,” “Chase and Harmony,” and “Golden Light” to name a few. And that voice! Approaching 72 years on this 3rd planet from the sun, Anderson is in fine vocal form. The musical suite I would like to highlight here is also the third one on this wonderful recording, “Everyone Heals.” Part 1 of this 3 song suite concludes with a jazz influenced passage featuring Stolt’s fine lead guitar work and the electric piano of keyboardist Tom Brislin. It’s a bit reminiscent, at least to this listener, of Chick Corea’s 70’s era fusion band, Return to Forever. Part III, “Golden Light” concludes the suite with the especially enjoyable refrain “To the gift of giving you love” accompanied by a middle eastern influenced keyboard backdrop.
In the end, even after repeated listenings, I can’t decide if the music created here more closely resembles 70’s era YES or the modern wave of progressive rock of Flower Kings. You’ll just have to listen and decide for yourself. The music created on this satisfying collaboration doesn’t stray too far from the influences of Anderson and Stolt respectively. It showcases a shared appreciation of a musical genre that 1 legend helped to create (Anderson) and the other (Stolt) has revitalized for the foreseeable future.
Check out the teaser below taken from the opening 3 part suite, “The Invention of Knowledge.”
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