{"id":41923,"date":"2010-03-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-unknown\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:20:12","slug":"the-unknown","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-unknown\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pete Frame<\/a>, where are you when we need you?<\/p>\n

Alright then, we\u2019ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way.\u00a0 The material intended to comprise first full album from the team of Yes bassist\/harmony vocalist-for-life Chris Squire and sometime Yes utilityman Billy Sherwood \u2013 under the name The Chris Squire Experiment — ended up becoming Yes\u2019s 1997 album Open Your Eyes<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0 The subsequent Squire-Sherwood collaboration was credited to the two men jointly and titled Conspiracy<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0 The third in this loose trilogy — disjointed in some respects, but musically quite cohesive — came with the 2003 Sherwood-Squire album The Unknown<\/i>, this time credited to Conspiracy, a group consisting of Squire, Sherwood, and Jay Schellen.\u00a0 The latter being the drummer from World Trade, the band Sherwood was leading when Squire first sought him out in 1989.\u00a0 Oh, and there\u2019s a song called \u201cConspiracy,\u201d but it\u2019s on this album by<\/u> Conspiracy, not the previous one called<\/u> Conspiracy<\/i>.\u00a0 Still with me? <\/p>\n

Good.\u00a0 The third Squire-Sherwood collaboration finds the duo bouncing back from the rather lifeless Conspiracy <\/i>album to deliver a significantly more entertaining disc.\u00a0 The music is still fundamentally arena-prog in the 80s Yes vein, but the melodies are stronger, the music more varied, and the playing more dynamic.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Squire in particular has a great time with the bounding bass lines of cuts like the opening \u201cConspiracy,\u201d a thumping arena rocker with creative changes and strong harmony vocals.\u00a0 In an immediate shift from the samey-ness that infected Conspiracy<\/i>, \u201cConfess\u201d follows with an acoustic opening that rapidly builds into a propulsive tune with a bit of an \u201cOpen Your Eyes\u201d feel.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The seven-minutes-plus \u201cNew World\u201d is an early highlight, full of superb Squire riffage and enough musical shifts to push it to the verge of blossoming into a prog-style suite.\u00a0 It\u2019s an entertaining ride, if you can just ignore the string-o-cliches lyric (\u201cAll aboard now \/ Rolling across the nation \/ Station to station\u2026 It\u2019s the New World train on a one way track \/ It\u2019s a one way ticket and there\u2019s no way back\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf A World Away\u201d and \u201cThere Is No End\u201d aren\u2019t especially memorable, but do at least add some variety to the duo\u2019s standard slick AOR palette, as the former takes advantage of Squire\u2019s choral approach to arranging the duo\u2019s tandem lead vocals, while the latter features Sherwood laying down some uncharacteristically bluesy guitar.\u00a0 From there it\u2019s more shiny-pretty arena prog in the Asia-Trevor Rabin vein until the closing title track, where things take a turn for the cool.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Unknown\u201d is the only epic-length tune here at 11 minutes, and offers a welcome shift from the template as guest guitarist Jimmy Haun layers rich helpings of acoustic string-bending over a funky, unpredictable time signature.\u00a0 Meanwhile Squire pumps out slow, fat bass notes that function more as decorative elements than rhythmic markers.\u00a0 The track moves through multiple shifts in tempo and arrangement, not always hanging together perfectly, but displaying tremendous chops and bravado along the way.\u00a0 Among them, Haun\u2019s squirrelly electric soloing in the middle and latter sections evokes Alex Lifeson, a compliment indeed.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting to this Circa<\/a> fan is to consider how this album both presages and stands apart from Circa.\u00a0 Given that both groups feature Sherwood, Schellen and a founding member of Yes, why is Circa — which also features Haun — so much stronger?\u00a0 Haun\u2019s guest shot on \u201cThe Unknown\u201d points to the answer, which really comes down to the old baseball principle of putting your players at their best positions.\u00a0 Sherwood handles himself respectably on guitar and keyboards, but he\u2019d be the first to tell you that (a) his best instrument is bass, and (b) Tony Kaye and Jimmy Haun are world-class players. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Unknown<\/i> is a pleasant-enough conclusion to the Sherwood-Squire trilogy, too sheeny and Rabinesque for this reviewer in places, but plenty engaging and dynamic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8547],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-41923","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-conspiracy","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41923"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}