Two masters from different eras working together? That’s one way of looking at the combination of Jon Anderson and Roine Stolt. But this isn’t just two giants from the progressive world pooling their considerable natural resources. But a project with a fresh sound, in the process making music that spans the ages.

For me, this is an album that will prove to be timeless,” says Stolt. “In the way that you can put on a Yes album from the ’70s now and it still sounds fresh, so I feel people will be able to listen to what we have done here in 10 years’ time and it will still make an impact.

The idea to bring together the Yes legend and The Flower Kings/Transatlantic maestro actually came from InsideOut owner Thomas Waber.

It was Thomas who originally told me that I should work with Jon Anderson,” recalls Stolt. “But at the time, Jon was just so busy that I couldn’t see any way this might happen.

But fate, as it can sometimes do, already had laid plans for this alliance. So, in February 2014, the pair were brought together on the Progressive Nation At Sea cruise.

Mike Portnoy suggested Transatlantic should do a couple of songs live with Jon, when he agreed to join the cruise. It was meant to be a surprise for everyone, and no more than a 20 minute set. But then Jon emailed and suggested we should also do the first side of the ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’ album. Now, I love that music, but it was an extra 20 minutes to learn. But we were all really keen to do this. So, we spent three hours on board the boat rehearsing, and then performed for an hour or so with Jon, doing ‘The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of The Dawn)’ (the aforementioned ‘…Topographic Oceans’ piece), ‘Long Distance Runaround’, ‘And You And I’ and ‘Starship Trooper’. That was the first time I had ever met Jon, but we got on very well.”

“Roine and I had a wonderful instant connection when we met on that boat out of Miami two years ago,” adds Anderson.

From this beginning, Anderson and Stolt began exchanging musical ideas across the world.

The foundation of the songs started many moons ago via the internet,” explains Anderson. “Even though we are at opposite ends of the world, we have been able to co-create this very special album, thanks to the modern technological world we live in.”

“Jon began to send me through files with ideas he had,” adds Stolt. “And I took these, chopped them into bits and began to assemble the tracks for the album. This process began in the summer of 2014 and over the next six months or so, everything came together. Because of the time difference, Jon would get up in the morning and send me over demos he had been creating with musicians out there, and I would then take these and develop them.

And Stolt was delighted with the way things worked out.

It was like going back to the ’70s in one way. Because there were no rules. We were drawing inspiration from all sorts of musical heritages across the world. There were no restrictions. Jon said he didn’t want us to do a traditional progressive rock album, but rather wanted it to be progressive music. It took me a little while to understand what he meant. However, the point was that we didn’t need to aim at producing a rock record. We should be prepared to bring in any musical elements we wanted. And he was right. We took inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. There is so much music out there to be excited by, so why deny yourself that possibility?”

However, there is still a familiarity in the way the music sounds, something Stolt was keen to keep at the core of what has been achieved.