Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56792 in Digital Music Album
• Released on: 2009-09-08
• Running time: 2526 seconds

Customer Reviews

The river sweats oil and tar...
As the liner notes indicate, this group named itself after American composer Terry Riley's 1969 minimalist masterpiece "A Rainbow in Curved Air", although the music on this 1971 release is anything but minimalist. This is an album of full-blown prog and the eight pieces on 2nd Album display use of odd time signatures, virtuosic playing by all musicians (in fact, keyboardist Francis Monkman and Darryl Way studied briefly at the Royal Academy of Music), some fairly intricate ensemble playing, and great vocals from alto Sonja Kristina. Keyboardist Francis Monkman used the VCS-3 synthesizer quite heavily in addition to the Hammond organ, mellotron, and piano on this recording. Interestingly, he was also a decent electric guitarist and utilized both distorted and "clean" tones. Violinist Darryl Way is also excellent and along with Sonja Kristina authored the first five tracks, while Francis Monkman composed three tracks including the energetic Everydance, the somewhat silly Bright Summers Day '68, and the excellent 12'53" Piece of Mind suite. It is worth noting that Piece of Mind features Sonja Kristina reciting a passage from T.S. Eliot's epic "Wasteland". In fact, "highbrow" references to literature were not unusual around this time, i.e., Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane wrote a piece influenced by James Joyce's radical Ulysses. Percussionist/drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa is excellent and displays a stylistic range that spans virtuosic and thunderous rave ups on Everydance to the hypnotic conga parts on the quiet piece Puppets. The bass slot was filled by the superb Ian Eyre on 2nd Album, although the bass position was in a constant state of flux with several bassists coming and going over the space of a few years. Although Curved Air was plagued by personnel changes, they managed to forge a distinctive sound over the course of three great and highly recommended albums including Air Conditioning (1970), 2nd Album (1971), and Phantasmagoria (1972).

The air is always curved if you choose to see it
An excellent sophomore effort. Born from the British group Sisyphus in 1968, the core of Frances Monkman (Guitar), Florian Pilkington-Miksa (Drums) and Rob Martin (Bass) met up with another visionary, Darryl Way (Violin, Keyboards) to form Curved Air. Very shortly, they were joined by Acoustic Guitarist/Singer Sonja Kristina. Personnel change for this album brought Ian Eyre on as Bassist. A milestone in the Progressive/Folk Rock genre had surfaced from the psychedelic mold, and Curved Air was making mega-leaps in song construction and complexity. From the haunting Jumbo to bouncy Bright Summer's Day '68 to the dark Piece of Mind, all cuts continue with the complex arrangements. Another gem of an album for Curved Air. Highly recommended. It is unfortunate that this band didn't get the recognition it deserved in the U.S. The same fate as Gentle Giant.

a few additions to previous reviews
I heard this music well after the fact but well before today. I was 19 in 1982 when i discovered this, and it is the only Curved Air album i've heard. Am so happy to see it is available now on cd and will be ordering right after i finish this comment.

It is so rooted in the period that it may be hit or miss for younger folks, but on the other hand it is such strong music it may still crash through 35 years of music evolution to some degree as it did strongly for me after 10 years of music evolution by the time i heard it the first time.

As far as her voice, yes, when i first heard it, i was comparing everything to mainstream production values and i though it sounded odd and vaguely weak. But the musical virtuosity and the more kinetic tracks like "Everdance" (pretty sure it is called that, even tho Amazon has it listed as "Everydance") hooked me long enough to just let the album play on a number of times. The song on the other side of that album that tricked me into letting that side play was "Bright Summer's Day '68", previously described as silly in here, but to me it was a wonderful blend of happy bouncy bluesy music with a light-hearted casual singing style about all kinds of awful things that happen, with cool conscious-penetrating filtered voice inserts, etc. A real delight. Backstreet Luv is brooding and musically takes you down to an alley-level feeling even though it is progressive and not derivative. Her voice is alternatively creepy and kind of sexy-lecturing-unison.

But after hearing the whole album a few times, the other songs really started getting under my skin and wouldn't get out of my head, and a big part of it was her voice. Of course, i've since been exposed to the whole range of musical expression, of which bands like Jethro Tull and Genesis are but a tiny sliver. Against the whole backdrop of it all, Sonja Kristina had a wonderful quirky jazzy breathy sexy slightly-disjoint delivery that fits perfectly into this kind of music. It would absolutely kill it to have someone more traditionally technical singing these parts.

Even "the slow song" that i skipped right over many times at first (because i was 19 and had way too short of an attention span for a SLOW song) wormed deep into my subconscious and years later, even today, though i haven't heard that record in decades, i still think the dreamy, floating "Jumbo" is one of THE most haunting, subtle, emotionally yearning while simultaneously disconnecting pieces i've ever heard, and nothing has ever come as close for me to capturing the feeling of reflection and ambivalence and travel weariness and fondness for home while on a long jet flight as this song. It is amazing.