Roundabout | Yes | Full Band Cover

Roundabout by ‪@yesofficial‬ (off their 1971 album, Fragile) is one of the first great prog anthems I was exposed to years before I even picked up an instrument. Chris Squire's growling, locomotive bass line, Steve Howe's and Rick Wakeman's highly technical guitar and keyboard playing, Bill Bruford's crisp drums and Jon Anderson's distinct vocals are the bedrock upon which 1970s prog was built on. For the longest time, I had wanted to cover the song, but could never find the right people who were skilled enough to tackle its challenging parts...until now. After playing with Goi and ET at the local blues jam, I set into motion what would arguably be the most technical Gothik Serpent cover ever. From a production standpoint, the goal was to give the song a modern spin, with more dense vocal harmonies, a heavier guitar sound, and a more diverse synth palette that draws inspiration from Yes's 2017 RRHOF performance. While Roundabout isn't a particularly difficult song to unpack production-wise, it has some pretty intricate bass, guitar and keyboard parts that lock tightly together at various points. For my part, I was horrified to discover that I had been playing the distinct bass riff wrong all these years, and had to spend a good chunk of time un-learning and re-learning it. Additionally, the amount of vocals and harmonies in this tune is enormous. Olivia and I spent more time dissecting and recording vocals than any individual song we've done. While I can typically identify and reproduce individual harmonies by ear, Yes's more unusually constructed vocal parts forced me to transcribe them onto piano first in order to understand how they worked together. For the drums, special attention was paid to the percussion-heavy middle section. I had Tau draw more inspiration from Bill Bruford's 1989 performance with ABWH, in which he gave that part a Latin vibe. Tau was more favorable to the studio version, so he added extra percussion to make our version a middle ground between the two. It's a behemoth of a song that required calling on the most number of collaborators I've worked with in nearly a decade, and I hope it does justice to the original. Check out the Gothik Serpent discography: https://gothikserpent.bandcamp.com/ Kerwin Tsang - Bass, vocals, additional guitars, synthesizer programming, mixing, video editing Olivia Jean Kong - Vocals Tau Bowyer - Drums, percussion, mastering, additional mixing, camera Goi Chin Yee - Guitars, lighting, cameras, video pre-production ET - Keyboards Additional Personnel Don Tan - Camera