CURVED AIR

Esoteric do a fine little line in simply-presented boxed sets from prog groups who didn't quite hit the top tier of the genre in terms of commercial success or critical acclaim, but remain worth a listen by fans. Curved Air fits that description to a tee, and this boxed set offers nicely remastered versions of their first four albums - a good thing since early CD releases were a bit patchy (especially when it comes to the debut, where I suspect some CD releases just sourced the sound off the vinyl rather than going to the master tapes, a particularly bad call since as an early picture disc that album had notable sound issues in its original release).

Some might query the inclusion of Air Cut, arguing that the original incarnation of Curved Air only really lasted for three albums, with most of the founder members departing after Phantasmagoria leaving Sonja Kristina as the only original member of the group, and the sound of Air Cut was very different from the original trilogy. That said, I think Air Cut was a valiant attempt to keep the group going, and the nice-sounding remaster on here presents it in a good light. After this, the band would disband fully, only to be dragged back together to resolve an awkward tax issue, so from that perspective drawing the line after Air Cut feels more sensible.

Great album, that surprisingly gets slammed on a regular basis. It might not be the usual, regular release from a band (more of a special release), but nothing in the music gives that away.

This is technically their 5th album, after Air Cut, and before Midnight Wire.

The sound quality is great, and has a large, atmospheric feel to it, thanks to the reverb. It sounds highly professional and even like a recent release.

Highlights include the title track Lovechild, Seasons, Joan (an intrumental piano piece), The Dancer, and Paris By Night. Wonderful singing by Kristian, violin and keyboards by Eddie Jobson. The jury is out on who exactly is on guitar. Wiki says it's mostly Thordur Arnason. Kirby is only on the one song "The Flasher", which is his song, and doesn't have the big sound of the rest of the album.

Curved Air's debut album sat right on the borderline of early prog and late psychedelic pop; for their second album, imaginatively entitled Second Album, they turned the prog dial up a little, with Francis Monkman's keyboards and Darryl Way's violin intertwining in memorable fashion on songs like opening track Young Mother.

Back Street Luv, the second song, was a surprise commercial hit for the band; the title suggests some sort of dirty blues-rock number more than it does a psych-prog mashup, but the slightly harder edge the band adopt on the song is an interesting development of their sound, even if it isn't very characteristic of them. On the album it's followed up with Jumbo, which has them embracing their classical ambitions once again, and listening to both songs back to back really conveys the span that Curved Air are capable of.

The most psych-poppy of the album's material, Bright Summer Day '68, is the briefest and serves as a palette-cleanser before Piece of Mind, the 12 minute number which is the proggiest item here. None of this pushes the album into the realm of an absolute classic, but all of the compositions here have something to like about them, and in general helps cement Curved Air as a reliable second-tier band from the early prog years.

My mixed feeling for this creation. The "Second Album" released in 1971 by CURVED AIR, an iconic unit in the British Progressive Rock Scene, features kinda mysterious combination of pop, folk, classic, and progressive rock. The overall atmosphere is defined mainly by Sojna's fascinating voices and Darryl's sharp-edged but smooth violin plays, and we can hear through the atmosphere that they might have created a diverse sound collective along with colourful musical backgrounds laid behind the combo. Possibly plenty of elements would amuse and entertain the audience.

On the other hand, we could mention this album is not very unified nor sophisticated, due to their musical polarity like a jack-in-the-box. They stood at the dawn of progressive rock scene around 1970 so, in a good sense, their strategy worldwide would be great really. Sounds like they might produce one of their 'key' songs "Back Street Luv" with catchy melody lines and sensitive lyrics for promoting themselves to the 70s pop scene. "You Know" is jazzy bluesy stuff full of refined percussive rhythms and acceptable melodic texture. The shortest track "Bright Summer's Day 68" is pretty cute and charming chanson-y folk. Such flavour could not be called progressive actually but honest to say they should create to eat, not eat to create.

Anyway the last suite "Piece Of Mind", blended with mystic voices and repetitive, impressive violin sounds, has two appearances - sort of deep, heavy, depressive moment, and dramatic, delightful, theatrical movements seasoned with Baroque spices in the main stage. Lots of symphonic progressive rock fans call this perfect creation as their masterpiece. It's not wrong at all, but let me say, their real progressiveness can be heard via the first enthusiastic blaster "Young Mother" stuffed with various elements that are completely unified and harmonized. And surprisingly this song is definitely dignified with listener-friendly pop essence. We progressive rock fans can be easily knocked out by such a fantastic gem.

Totally, above mentioned, "Second Album" would not be polished enough for progressive rock reviewers to get ultimately satisfied, but we can obviously hear 'their innovative development' through the creation. Therefore, this album is, and will be alive eternally.

Oh what a brilliant album it is! Curved Air previous records were always good but not that good! It has a moments on it (particulary on the last two tracks) were they sound like Renassaince went totaly Gentle Giant which is amazing in terms of compositional skills, the adventurous sound and overall musicianship. This is their most prog album and the best one. Wish they stayed on this path a bit longer and delivered epic of some sort like it was common among prog bands those days. Nevertheles this one is a gem (still) waiting to be discovered and acknowledged by a wider prog audience. 4,5 stars.

CURVED AIR arrived on the English Progressive Rock scene like a fresh sea breeze in 1970. They're a classic band from the Golden Age of Prog, long before angry young oiks came along to spoil it all in 1977 by forming "bands", and then causing Anarchy in the U.K by snorting Harpic up their nostrils and then going on to make a godawful racket on Radio Riot FM by banging bits of furniture together - which is about as exciting to listen to as tuning into the Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4 to find out the state of the sea at Dogger Bank. Curved Air were a REAL band featuring the striking vocals of Sonja Kristina, who was actually from the unremarkable town of Brentwood in Essex, despite her exotic-sounding name. The line-up also included violinist and keyboard player extraordinaire, Darryl Way. His maniacal violin-playing was a major part of what gave Curved Air such a unique sound, and he also co-wrote the band's only hit single "Back Street Luv", which featured on their second album in 1971. He later went on to form his own wild and untamed band, Darryl Way's Wolf in 1973. Another key member of the early line-up was Francis Monkman on guitars and keyboards, who later achieved great success with the Classical Rock Fusion band, Sky. The rhythm section of Curved Air featured a revolving door line-up of bass players with the powerhouse presence of Florian Pilkington-Miksa on drums and percussion for their first three studio albums. Curved Air's cleverly- titled first album "Airconditioning" (1970) featured "Vivaldi", one of their best-known signature songs, allowing Darryl Way to go off on an unrestrained free flight of fancy with his vivacious violin. Seemingly running out of inspiration for album titles, Curved Air's second album was simply titled "Second Album" (1971). It's their third album though, "Phantasmagoria" (1972), which is generally regarded as their finest album, and that's the album we're focusing on here for this review. The band were given a breath of fresh air with a change of line-up for their amusingly-titled "Air Cut" (1973) album. A Live album followed in 1975 and the band released two further studio albums in the mid-70's, "Midnight Wire" (1975) and "Airborne" (1976) which failed to really take off. Curved Air then took a VERY long extended break on the island of Hiatus and made a long-awaited return with Sonja Kristina still on vocals for two comeback albums in the new millennium, "Reborn" (2008) and "North Star" (2014), followed by an instrumental double album, "Curved Space & Infinity" (2016), bringing us right up to date. It's time now to find out what phantasmagorical musical delights Curved Air have managed to conjure up for their third album.

Scaramouche, Scaramouche, can you do the fandango? No, it's not THAT Queen. It's "Marie Antoinette", the first song on the album and the tragic last Queen of France before the French Revolution, who was very unfairly executed for "high treason" by guillotine. Not that being executed by guillotine can ever be considered "fair", but that's the French Revolutionaries for you, where the normal rulebook which governed law and order was thrown out the French window and trodden on. Anyway, back to the music, and what we have here is a simply stunning Symphonic Prog masterpiece in the best traditions of Annie Haslam's Renaissance. Sonja Kristina's hauntingly beautiful siren-song vocals really lift this historic song up into prog heaven and beyond on a soaring wave of passionate intensity and raw emotion. Just take a look at these flag-waving nationalistic lyrics in the dramatic fervour of the first verse:- "Marie Antoinette, Your name's a legend, In this land, Treasure for your pleasure, Bestowed on favoured gentleman, The people are in arms, Marching on the town, They rise - Changing revolution! Vive la Nation!" ..... And that's just the beginning, with five more verses to come! It's enough to make you come over all patriotic and stand up for a rousing rendition of the French national anthem, especially if you happen to be French. "Marie Antoinette" is a real masterclass in songwriting, and when the powerful lyrics are combined with surging symphonic splendour, the end result is simply sublime! It's enough to make you go all weak at the knees and leave you with a delicious warm and fuzzy feeling inside. You know the feeling. This orgiastic aural delight will take you as Close to the Edge of experiencing the Big "O" as you can possibly get without even taking your clothes off.

Having been lifted to the heights of aural ecstasy and beyond with the stunning opening number, it's time now for the melancholic haunting refrain of "Melinda (More or Less)", a gentle Folk song that's so sweet, you can almost taste the honey. The warm and tender music glides softly over the listener like a light zephyr breeze, sounding as soft and gentle as the gossamer wings of an angel. This lovely song reminds one of the Uriah Heep classic "Come Away Melinda", although Uriah Heep didn't have Sonja Kristina's sweet angelic voice to carry you up to prog heaven on a pleasure-wave of blissful sweet dreams. "Melinda (More or Less)" is truly beautiful with a disposition as gentle and unthreatening as a Golden Labrador puppy playing with a roll of Andrex toilet tissue - if you can still buy a roll of Andrex in the shops. The title of the third song on the album "Not Quite the Same" is a bit of a misnomer, because it represents a complete departure from the first two superlative songs. It's an offbeat and slightly freakish tune, arriving with a fanfare of trumpets and sounding somewhat akin to Curved Air's one and only hit song "Back Street Luv", only quirkier. The kooky song is as eccentric and unexpected as the sight of Arnold Schwarzeneggar ballet dancing to Swan Lake, in a pink tutu. Yes, this bizarre tune might sound as crazy and demented as a box of frogs at times, but if variety is the spice that makes for a great album, Curved Air have scored a hat trick with the first three unique songs on this phantasmagorical feast for the ears. Not only does each song arrive like a breath of fresh (Curved) Air, but the band have also managed to carve out their own distinctive niche of prog that's instantly recognisable to every ardent "progaholic". The fourth song on the album, "Cheetah", is a manic instrumental violin-fest, sounding as fast and nimble as Usain Bolt being chased across the Serengeti by a hungry lion, and finally, closing out Side One comes "Ultra-Vivaldi", which is exactly what it says on the label. It's a brief, ultra-ramped-up version of the original Curved Air classic, only this time it's a crazy synthesiser that's on the rampage intead of a violin, and sounding like Rick Wakeman on steroids!

And now for something completely different, as we arrive at the title track, "Phantasmagoria", another strange and quirky tune, but that's no less than what you'd expect from a song called "Phantasmagoria", an off-kilter song which conjures up spooky images of ghosts and ghoulies going through walls in a haunted mansion at midnight, during a thunderstorm. A brief sample of the creepy lyrics gives you a foretaste of what you can expect to hear:- "You run upstairs to lie there, Waiting for the floor to creak and, And something goes bumpity bumpity bump up the stairs, The time has come to wonder, Who could be the owner of that cold clammy hand that's exploring the end of the bed." ..... It's still not safe to come out from under the bed yet though with the seventh "song", "Whose Shoulder Are You Looking Over Anyway?", which is not really a song at all, but a very unsettling series of scary nightmare images and sounds you might experience in a bad dream, or your worst nightmare. There's no escape from the nightmare either as Curved Air unleash Merry Hell with "Over and Above", a manic Looney Tune that sounds like it belongs in a straitjacket, although it's also rather wonderful too. The band constantly blur the lines between fantasy and reality here and enter a surreal Twilight Zone world, embarking on a wild excursion into the Outer Limits of Prog with unrestrained gay abandon. Finally, it's time to get off the Crazy Train with the funky sound of "Once a Ghost, Always a Ghost", a syncopated funky gibbon groove featuring African tribal rhythms and a vibrant vibraphone too!

Curved Air's extraordinary third album is a towering cumulonimbus thunderhead amongst classic prog albums. When you have a band with such a talented line-up as Curved Air, combined with a prog album from the golden year of 1972, you know you have an album that's just as dependable and reliable as a German automobile with a Sat Nav that always points Fritz in the direction of Poland as he's heading down the autobahn. Curved Air's "Phantasmagoria" is quite literally an album of two halves, with Side One featuring some outstanding and memorable prog classics, before going completely off the rails for Side Two, which takes you on a dark descent into madness in a terrifying world of phantasmagorical dreams and nightmares which still sounds crazy after all these years, but only in a good way. It's prog, but not as we know it. If ever an album deserved a place in the Eclectic Prog section of ProgArchives, then it's this offbeat but superb album, which takes prog to new extremes of eclecticism. Choosing not to listen to this fine album would be a bit like having Kate Winslet in your bed and choosing to sleep on the couch instead, and if you only decide to buy one Curved Air album, buying this album is as easy a choice to make as deciding between a holiday on the sunny French Riviera or the permafrost wasteland of Yakutsk in Siberia.

If one was to ask 100 CURVED AIR fans and interested critics to name their favourite album by this early 1970s art rock band, the numbers would probably be split more or less equally between their first 4, which implies that the band was commendably dependable but also that they never managed to attain the peaks of most of their contemporaries. And, while "Second Album" lacks a "Vivaldi", "Melinda More or Less" and "Metamorphosis", my conclusion is that it is neither better nor worse than any of the others, just perhaps slightly more consistent.

It's hard to pick out highlights but I enjoy the hook laden "Back Street Luv" (which reached UK #4) and "You Know", as well as the ballads "Jumbo" and "Puppets". Way's violin technique really elevates the upbeat "Everdance". If the epic closer "Piece of Mind" achieves more girth than emotional resonance, it's still worthwhile just for its avant garde vocal and piano runs.

Like other CURVED AIR releases, "Second Album" falls short of being the complete package, like a delivery that was opened and adulterated before it ever got to your front door. Sure it's mostly functional but it suffers a bit from a lack of this and a excess of that.

CURVED AIR's debut firmly established the band's identifiable mix of classical, folk, rock and psychedelia which would persist throughout their initial run. This was by far their most commercially successful long player in the UK both in terms of peak position (#8) and weeks on the chart (21). How much of this had to do with its being issued as one of the first picture disks and the photogenicity of Sonja Kristina is unclear, but what was apparent from the start was that CURVED AIR managed to be unique rather than special. Today they are regarded as influential but somehow fall short of legendary. Very few if any of their numbers have been acknowledged as classics, possibly because they just aren't very memorable, the ambitious opuses lacking fluidity and the more "traditional" songs somehow failing to ignite beyond their initial promise.

On the flip side, I'm not sure CURVED AIR knew how to spell "sell out" let alone attempt it, and they could sure play, which helped compensate for generally mundane lyrical content. They even stumbled on a few ear worms, the very first being album opener "It Happened Today", the first and by far the best of their radio ready tracks which culminated commercially in "Back Street Luv" off the next album. The transition from rocker to neo classical in the middle is a harbinger of their eclectic attitude. Unfortunately, the toe-tapping is brutalized by "Stretch", a shambles of a boogie- blues that sounds more like a lesser JEFFERSON AIRPLANE. The album reaches its apex on "Vivaldi", a Darryl Way ode to the Italian baroque master that is equal parts classical rock and sonic experimentation, and "Hide and Seek", an eerie slice of heavy stoner prog with superb guitar from Monkman and even some impressive harmony vocals. Most of the rest is distinctly average for the reasons already mentioned.

"Air Conditioning" may have established CURVED AIR as a fleeting sensation and, like all their albums, has enough highlights to steer clear of redundancy, but somehow they were never cool or hot enough to fulfill their potential.

Perhaps on the strength of their sultry female "frontman", their kickoff picture disk, and a top 5 single in the early going, CURVED AIR stormed out of the gate at the dawn of the 1970s. Unfortunately, being an archetypal super group assembled before the members solidified their reputations, they were cursed with steady attrition of those members who were clearly at war at least in a musical sense. By the time of "Air Cut", both Monkman and Way were out, 17 year old EDDIE JOBSON was in on both violin and keyboards and their profile hit the skids, at least in their homeland.

Speaking from my own experience, in Canada, where their early albums had, even cumulatively, barely eroded the cheapest stylus, "Air Cut" soared in relative terms, entirely on the strength of the 10 minute opus, "Metamorphosis". While it might not be quite as original as their earlier highlights, its warmth exposes the virtuosic iciness of most of their previous offerings, in case one hadn't noticed already. It's also a near perfect piece that combined angelic (!) vocals, cryptically resonating pagan lyrics, martial drumming, lofty lead guitar, and, most of all, astounding synthesizer, organ AND piano courtesy of Jobson. It's astonishing that the band never did anything else that remotely compares in style, composition, arrangements or achievement, and in fact it's one of the keynote prog epics of any era.

The rest is the uneven potpourri following its antecedents' precedence. By far the most exciting is "Armin", which showcases Jobson on the violin with which he would soon become inseparably associated. "Elfin Boy" highlight's Kristina's more maudlin side, but it can't hold a candle to "Melinda More or Less" from "Phantasmagoria" in case you were wondering. "Easy" is a worthy closer with Kirby Gregory conveying expert leads throughout, trading the spotlight with more Jobson jabs. Beyond this, we have a tepid attempt at another fluke hard rock hit in "Purple Speed Queen" and the ill advised and dire foray into male lead vocals in "Two Three Two". Even Sonja can't save the only marginally better "UHF".

Worth it for "Metamorphosis" alone - well, really off key ambulance sirens would be worth listening to if Metamorphosis was embedded in their somewhere - "Air Cut" is otherwise slightly inferior to, say "Phantasmagoria", which would have been CURVED AIR's closest approximation of unity even as the inevitable cuts loomed.

It seems somehow contradictory to conclude both that CURVED AIR were pioneers of violin led prog rock and that their music has not aged especially well. One of the few bands of their ilk to have a legit run at the UK charts, It's not for lack of talent or innovation that they are barely mentioned anymore. While they produced 4 notable albums in their initial run, all were packed with an excess of foam peanuts at which even a foam elephant would turn up its trunk, and too few bonafide classics to defeat most one "hit" wonders in the prog world. The Monkman-Way tandem played like virtuosi and unfortunately composed like them too, and, while the arrangements are cluttered with too many at the same volume, it's unclear how much of this is due to a mixing engineer who gave his master the wrong address and quickly flashed his learner's permit in the studio security line. Don't get me started on Sonja's would be powerful voice that sounds too hypoxic to maintain a consistent level of clarity.

In spite of, or perhaps due to all these shortcomings, "Phantasmagoria" still projects the band as an unsung hero of their day. The melodies are imaginative, particularly on the first two tracks. "Melinda More or Less" hints at what CURVED AIR might have been had they actually gone folk rock, that is to say, had the impossible happened with the personnel on hand. Instead the jazzy inflections of "Over And Above" elicit fascination even as they flit capriciously from theme to theme. The xylophone and vibraphone of Monkman, the equally improvisational violin of Way, and the hired brass section string this one up on its high heels and festively explode the petard on which it precariously balances. "Once a Ghost Always a Ghost" wraps it all up in a similar vein assuring that the album live up to its name a bit too much for its own good.