Album review: Yak - The Pink Man & The Bishop (2025)

I’ve been a Yak fan since 2009 when my donation to the Tower Hill Stables Animal Sanctuary was rewarded with the Steve Hackett endorsed CD The Journey of the Yak and I dutifully pre-ordered the follow up, 2015’s Quest For The Stones which I’ve reviewed for these pages and posted on Progarchives. Those two albums were recorded by the trio of Martin Morgan (keyboards), Gary Bennett (bass) and Dave Speight (drums), but the oddly-titled The Pink Man & The Bishop, coming 10 years after the epic Quest For The Stones, is almost a Morgan solo effort where, despite his ability to play physical drums to a pretty decent standard, he used Toontrack Ezdrummer and the authentic bass and guitar sounds, played on the keyboards, were sourced from Native Instruments’ Komplete Kontrol.

The title of the new album originates from a charity shop purchase of two soft toys by Morgan’s partner Fiona around 25 years ago, introduced to him as ‘the pink man’ and ‘the bishop’. Morgan was amused by characterisations, partly because it reminded him of the Monty Python sketch The Bishop from 1970 where the Bishop and four henchmen in dog collars and dark sunglasses get called to a series of church events: an ordinary service, a baptism, a wedding, a funeral, arriving just too late to stop the officiating cleric from being blown up or squashed by a 16-ton weight, and he vowed to use ‘The Pink Man And The Bishop’ as the title for some future album. The CD artwork shows the ‘the pink man’ and ‘the bishop’ superimposed on an old photo of the Essex village of Pleshey and behind them, symbolising the past, one of Morgan’s friends is playing cricket. The track titles have a kind of nostalgic feel to them and Morgan is an Essex man, so the imagery is very fitting. However, the intended back cover photo where the soft toys were to be seen from behind looking towards some dystopian future proved impossible to create because his photo album didn’t have any pictures of the future!

Title track The Pink Man & The Bishop has got a bit of a fusion feel to it, immediately stamping out something different from its two immediate predecessors. Keyboard-driven prog isn’t such a common thing anymore, so it’s nice to be reminded that good examples still exists where Morgan makes shifting time signatures sound perfectly natural. There’s a brightness to the synths which hints at neo prog but the presence of a jazz rock influence made me think of some instrumental part from Genesis’ A Trick of the Tail where Phil Collins’ time with Brand X informed his input on that album.

Crimson Camel is classic melodic symphonic prog and instantly recognisable as being Yak, where the keyboard patches transport the listener back to the mid 70s. One of the emulated guitar patches is subtly different from the Steve Hackett portamento tone which helps set it apart from both Journey of the Yak and Quest For The Stones. The idea of a photograph of the future for the cover artwork was replaced with a painting of a the face of a crimson-coloured camel by Brooke Schmidt, one of Morgan’s friends who had painted pictures of animals from Tower Hill Stables Animal Sanctuary in the past, and while the soft toys are seen from behind, looking at the camel, Morgan has stated that he doesn’t believe that our future is going to feature camels.

Heaven's Gate is more excellent melodic prog but it’s different from the old Yak template because the initial rhythmical component gives the piece a cinematic post-rock feel. I find it a rather stately piece where, if the melody line had been played using a flute patch, it could have been a Focus recording it. Perhaps, like Focus, there should be a sequence of eponymous-titled tracks, and this would be 'Yak IV'.

Long Long Ago is in the tradition of good old-school prog, with three distinct parts. Somehow, Morgan manages to conjure the spirit of David Gilmour out of his keyboards on the slow opening section but the inclusion of electric piano which, in my opinion, is under-used in progressive rock, helps make the track special and the theme oozes the feeling of yearning for something a long time ago. The upbeat middle section reminds me of Moonmadness-era Camel, and the final section is a reprise of the first. I think the track is fantastic and I have to wonder, outside a few bands, why more musicians aren’t writing in this style.

Maddox Street, the shortest track on the album at 4’41 is something of a departure from the Yak template and comes across as rather funky with some fast attack, though there’s still a bit of a melodic Camel feel. Its title hardly seems like something related to the album’s loose concept of looking back on the past but it somehow tenuously manages to fill the brief. Morgan played the composition to John Wynn, the Yak drummer from the time the band covered Rolling Stones and Santana songs, and they were chatting about the London riots. Wynn recounted the story of Mick Jagger attending the anti-war demonstration outside the US Embassy in 1968 where mounted police were employed to control the crowd, and Jagger escaped to the Rolling Stones’ office in Maddox Street where he wrote the lyrics for Street Fighting Man. When Wynn was told the piece was unnamed, he suggested the title ‘Maddox Street’.

The Best Years is an epic feast of genuine vintage keyboard sounds but Morgan still has time to conjure up a solo that sounds like expressive guitar before the tempo slows, and an ambient ending creates a feeling of poignancy, completing the Pink Man & The Bishop part of the album with the feeling that perhaps the best years are behind us.

Aragorn, included as a bonus track, first appeared on 2004’s Dark Side of the Duck but was re-worked in 2009 for a French compilation CD of Lord of the Rings-themed music billed as ‘A musical journey in the world of Tolkien’ and called The First Ring vol. 1, by the Morgan-Bennett-Speight trio and though it has been aired on YouTube, this version has never before appeared on a Yak album. Unsurprisingly, the track’s age and Tolkien imagery place it firmly in Journey Of The Yak sonic territory but it’s a fitting interpretation of Aragorn’s journey from Ranger to King with a slow, regal, emulated trumpet riff, flute, and fast Eddie Jobson-like organ work which could represent one of the battle scenes; Helm’s Deep, the Pelennor Fields or the battle before the gates of Mordor.

Flight of the Noldor is another Tolkien-related bonus track. It had previously only appeared on YouTube in draft format, featuring on the Yaksongs channel in June 2022. It’s another genuine prog mini-epic, clocking in at just under 10 minutes where the music is closest to that on Quest for the Stones, shifting from Genesis-inspired rippling piano underneath a haunting flute patch as a prelude to the drama of Morgan’s organ work that sounds like Danger Money-era UK. One surprise is the appearance of the sounds of a saxophone, though it doesn’t feel at all out of place.

The album is an excellent addition to the Yak canon. Morgan has always written the band’s music, so it should come as no shock that it’s readily identifiable as a Yak album with the expected tempo and metrical changes and while the core melodicism is ever present, the subtle widening of styles, all from prog or prog-related sources, indicate that the release is a progression from 2015’s Quest For The Stones – despite the nostalgic air!

Physical copies of The Pink Man & The Bishop can be ordered from the Yaksongs website https://www.yaksongs.com/