Curved Air are an English progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including clasical, folk and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band was a mixture of prog rock, folk and classical elements. The group evolved out of the band Sisyphus, which was formed by Darryl Way (who studied violin at Royal College of Music) and Francis Monkman, a member of the Royal Academy of Music. They discovered they had a lot in common, and in 1969 invited pianist Nick Simon who, along with bassist Rob Martin and drummer Florian Pilkington Miksa, completed the line-up of Sisyphus. Sisyphus metamorphosed into Curved Air, named after the album A Rainbow In Curved Air by Terry Riley. The name was suggested by Monkman who, having played in the first London performance of In C, was a great fan of Riley. The band’s new sound immediately came together and with Nick Simon leaving and Sonja Kristina joining as both the band’s voice and its sex symbol Curved Air was born.
The band received a much-publicized advance of £100,000 and their debut album Air Conditioning was released in November notable for its being issued as the first commercially available LP picture disc in the UK. The album reached number 8 in the UK Album Chart, preceded by a single, “It Happened Today”. John Peel picked up on the band and they performed on several Peel radio Sessions and Roundhouse ‘Implosion’ events. Bass player Rob Martin left due to a hand injury, and was replaced by Ian Eyre. The band released “Back Street Luv” which reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart to become the band’s most successful single to date. Notice the bizarre video effects which are diesigned to suggest that this music is progressive.
By the time of the third album release serious musical differences within the band emerged. According to Sonja Kristina, Francis was fascinated with overtones and natural harmonies, and “His other obsession is/was jamming… real ‘out there’ cosmic rock jamming. And that is not Darryl at all… He’s a very disciplined perfectionist, he likes things to be as precise and exquisite as possible. Whereas Francis is completely the opposite way; he just wants to play and things just come out of the cosmos”. As Monkman explained, Basically Darryl and I respect each others’ work, but we don’t really see eye-to-eye on most things. And we never really got the co-writing thing together. I wanted to get my first “epic” together, so it looks like a split forming at the time of the Second Album. In fact, the centre was never really solid after Rob left.
This division was reflected in the arrangement of tracks on Second Album and Phantasmagoria; side A of both albums was occupied by music composed by Darryl Way, while side B was devoted solely to Monkman’s compositions, with no true collaboration between the two writers. Phantasmagoria was recorded with bassist/guitarist Mike Wedgwood, who replaced Eyre. The album’s title was drawn from the Lewis Carroll poem of the same title. The album came out in April 1972 and reached number 20 in the U.K. After which Curved Air split up. My favourite of their songs ‘Melinda More or Less’ is drawn from Phantasmagoria.
In early 2008, the band regrouped. In May 2008, in a message to the Curved Air Yahoo Group, Kristina advised that the new line-up would be herself, Darryl Way (violin), Florian Pilkington-Miksa (drums), Andy Christie (guitar) and Chris Harris (bass). Francis Monkman, who was originally pictured with Kristina, Way and Pilkington-Miksa for the reunion, left the project. “Unfortunately, he didn’t have the same vision as the rest of us as to how (the new project) should be approached and wasn’t prepared to compromise, so our ways had to part”, commented Way. Sonja Kristina confirmed, “Francis was in at the beginning but had extremely different ideas from Darryl about how he wanted this new Curved Air to prepare and develop. Eventually, he withdrew. We continued with Darryl as our musical director and producer.”
