1970, they had worked with Eddy Offord who also mixed their sound in concert. After the Relayer tour, Offord thought the band's style had become "a bit stale", and thought a split was needed to work with other bands. Yes employed recording engineer John Timperley who was assisted by David Richards. In a first for the band, the album was solely produced by themselves. It is also the first engineering job for Yes' future sound mixer Nigel Luby, who "did little more than watch and acquaint myself with the equipment." Squire recalled numerous heated arguments over the use of echo on the album, as the group were divided over its use. The album marked a shift in the band's musical style. Having based Tales from Topographic Oceans and Relayer around extended or conceptual tracks, Yes decided to scale things back and record shorter and more accessible songs that critic and band biographer Chris Welch described as "user friendly". In one instance, Howe recalled the band had started to arrange a five-minute introduction to a song before they scrapped the idea, as the group realised "there are more ways of getting into songs [...] it was time to go back". Howe said that some songs originated from ideas "from other eras" of the band's history, specifically "Turn of the Century" and parts of "Awaken"; Squire said that others were almost completely improvised in the studio, such as the long keyboard section to "Awaken" and various closing keyboard and guitar solos on other songs. Anderson spoke about the group's direction at the time: "The album is a kind of celebration [...] Over the last two or three years we've been experimenting a lot and we're happy to have been given that chance. [...] We've come back to a happier medium. [...] If we wanted another 'Tales' concept we would have gone in that direction, but we needed to relax for a while—a little more laughing and jive." In addition to recording at Mountain Studios, "Parallels" and "Awaken" features the church organ at St. Martin's in the town of Vevey, some four miles away from Montreux. The band considered using a mobile studio to record on location, but Timperley persuaded them to rent a telephone line due to their high fidelity and the ability to feed the line directly into the studio. "Parallels" was recorded with Wakeman in the church and the rest