PHANTASMAGORIA

Phantasmagoria - with cover-art of a Gnome sitting on a mushroom smoking a Hookah, who could ask for more ??. This was Curved Air's 3rd release, one I discovered whilst in High-School in the late 80's. It is a wonderful album, and I'm always taken by a female vocalist fronting a bunch of intelligent musicians concocting complex arrangements !! Curved Air is just that, studied musos with a gorgeous lead vocalist (Stewart Copeland was one lucky guy...). Anyways, vocalist Sonja Kristina really sings quite adequately on this album, her voice sounds very pretty here, but for some reason, on the Live LP she approaches the music with a degree of raw, over-zealousness, which tends to suggest she was well rehearsed for the studio recordings at least.....of course, this is my perception of her singing. I've always admired Francis Monkman, and his endeavour to push things further, regarding composition and exciting new synthesizer technology available to him at the time, EMS Synthi (VCS3) in his case. Darryl Way and his passion of turning a hitherto classical instrument into a force-to-be-reckoned-with, the violin, which was already show-cased on their debut record. The rhythm section featured here, Mike Wedgewood - Bass, along with Florian Pilkington-Miksa on Drums, were open to tackle the inspired arrangements with the willingness to experiment, especially where song-structure is concerned. I feel that a track by track explanation is pointless, as the album in its entirety, is an essential listen for every fan of Progressive music. 4 stars.