Regarded by many as Yes’ masterpiece, Close To The Edge is virtually the opposite of its immediate predecessor, 1971’s Fragile. With only three songs — the nearly 19-minute, side-long title track, the 10-minute “And You and I” and the relatively concise (at just under nine minutes) “Siberian Khatru” — there was no room for filler, and there isn’t any. Everything here is necessary to the greater whole.

“Close To The Edge,” the song, is divided into four sections and showcases pretty much everything Yes could do at the time. It begins with the sounds of running water and chirping birds, but soon some seriously nasty guitar erupts, with the band clattering and zapping around behind; with its cacophonous lack of interplay, this passage prefigures the work of noisy, hyper-aggressive modern prog acts like Orthrelm and the Flying Luttenbachers. Though Jon Anderson chants a few nonsense syllables early on, interrupting Howe’s guitar attack, actual lyrics don’t appear until the four-minute mark. The piece continues along, with a second vocal line (from Howe and Chris Squire) emerging to provide counterpoint, and toward the 12-minute mark, Rick Wakeman takes a solo on a church organ, which blasts through everything like a tidal wave, basically flattening the whole structure and forcing the band to rebuild entirely for the song’s final five minutes. The track ends as it began, with nature sounds.

“And You And I” is much mellower and less of a suite than “Close To The Edge”; it’s mostly built around layers of acoustic guitar, with occasional zooming and squiggling noises from Rick Wakeman’s synths. At one point, Howe and Squire are singing alternate lyrics to Anderson, with their vocals filtered through a Leslie speaker. While at times the song gets close to Emerson, Lake & Palmer territory with its balance of acoustic singer-songwriterism and weirdo electronic intrusions, overall it’s Yes at their most pastoral and beautiful. “Siberian Khatru,” on the other hand, is a fast, constantly shifting rock track, with plenty of stinging guitar and burbling organ, and Bill Bruford driving the band hard. Wakeman’s keyboards take on a variety of roles, from sitar to harpsichord, moving the music through multiple moods even as the momentum never stops.