CURVED AIR

The Albums 1970 – 1973 CHERRY RED

Sonja Kristina and co’s first four albums boxed and still mostly splendid.

Curved Air’s early albums for Warner Brothers still stand as the finest of their career, and one can surely never grow tired of listening to them. This box set reissue gives fans a chance to celebrate once more the timeless music created by Sonja Kristina and her bandmates.

Their 1970 debut Air Conditioning was renowned as being the first commercially available LP picture disc in the UK. But the musical combination of the five – especially violinist Darryl Way and guitarist/keyboard player Francis Monkman – is stunningly cohesive for such a young band. The self-explanatorily titled Second Album in 1971 prospered sales-wise, in no small part due to hit single Back Street Luv. Despite the fact there were problems growing between Way and Monkman, the music retained a cultured edge.

The rift between the duo had deepened by the time of third album Phantasmagoria in 1972, which was why the former’s compositions were all on the first side, while Monkman’s graced the other side. Ironically, despite this schism, this album contains possibly the band’s best work during the period. Each of the musicians was pushing the others to improve and the result was a perfectly balanced combination of melody, enlightenment and raw energy.

Air Cut was a very different beast. Released in 1973, it featured just Sonja Kristina and bassist Mike Wedgwood from the previous album. The newly revamped line-up included teenage wunderkind Eddie Jobson on violin and synthesiser, and one cannot readily dismiss any band who are lucky enough to have him in their midst. But this was the sound of Curved Air trying to find their niche while weighed down by the success of the recent past. There are still moments like Metamorphosis, though, which shine through, thereby proving the new incarnation could rise to any challenge.

Curved Air are revered as among the best progressive bands during the golden period of the early 70s. These albums reaffirm the point.