AIRCONDITIONING

CURVED AIR's debut indicates its belonging to the early progressive rock scene thanks to its crudeness. When I speak of crudeness, I do not refer to technical terms; instead, it's more of a conceptual one.

AIRCONDITIONING is undoubtfully progressive rock. It is mostly focused on hard rock with psychedelic leanings, confirming the "rock" part, but punctual moments of jazziness with the constant influence from classical music and its structures solidify the "progressive" amount. This is where the aforementioned "crudeness" comes in: these attributes aren't well mashed together. They're disparate, played separately in their own sections, with very brief moments of syncretism among these two lines of thought. CURVED AIR certainly wanted to bring something new on the table by bringing classical music in a hard-rockish environment and that is pretty ingenious - this is classical at its purest form, with Vivaldi-inspired violins and symphonic elements - but sadly they weren't able to adequately make them feel natural and complimetary to each other.

Does this mean, then, this album is incoherent or bad? Definitely not. It is quite a listen! Sonja's soprano vocals played along the reverbed guitar in songs like It Happened Today or Hide and Seek sounds great. In no moment, AIRCONDITIONING lack eclectism. The composition and styles are visibly different between songs, such as one being distinctively calm while the next is a powerful surf-rock-esque frenzy, etc. And besides, as I said, there are brief moments of well-done mixture among prog and rock; specifically, on It Happened Today's second half (where the violin plays under a jazz fusion ambiance), within Rob One's extreme serenity and sweetness brought by the violins and through Vivaldi with Cannons, an over-the-top distorted and loud violin performance of, well, Vivaldi. On... yeah. Violin.

In the end, AIRCONDITIONING might not be the to-go choice for anyone thirsty of progressiveness or technicality; instead, it is the optimal choice for those looking for lighter, less ambitious things. Assuming the nature of this site I can't go much further than saying yes, this is good; but no, not in any way essential.

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