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Curved Air - Phantasmagoria CD (album) cover

PHANTASMAGORIA

Curved Air

 

Eclectic Prog

3.81 | 277 ratings

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Eetu Pellonpaa
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars This is definitely the best recording from this band I have yet heard!

The opener "Marie Antoinette" has a good jazzy touch on it, and it's different movements make it as a very good soft progressive classic tune. The singing is done here quite carefully, and the Belgian TV performance on the short "Masters from the Vaults" DVD is more psychedelic, dynamic and yet better with visual dimension. "Melinda (More or Less)", which is also on that DVD, is a classic British folk number, and the version on this album is really good with tasty violins and quite fast tempo. "Not quite the Same" opens with brass instruments introducing a late 60's oriented exceptionally good jazz song. Instrumental "Cheetah" follows this style, having some fast violin driven jazzy rhythms. Would be very interesting to hear live recordings from these lesser played tracks, if such would be found. "Ultra-Vivaldi" is then a short electronic version of the same idea present on their first album, sounding maybe little silly. The B-side of the vinyl starts with the album's title song "Phantasmagoria", which continues the groovy jazzy style with pleasant vocal arrangements and funny lyrics. The following "Whose Shoulder are You Looking Over Anyway?" is a three minutes long electronic aural landscape, which isn't very interesting as a solitary tune, but it works more as an introduction to the following song "Over and Above", lasting over eight minutes long. It is also a very nice psychedelic piece, among the best songsI have yet heard from this group! FLORIAN PILKINGTON-MIKSA and MIKE WEDGWOOD really can get a wonderful groove going on, upon where the solo instruments can do their stuff. Sadly as there is no visual level on this audio record, I'm unable to see SONJA KRISTINA flying uninhibited to the chaotic hippie space which the band creates, as this usually happens in the filmed documents of CURVED AIR performances or in my too vivid fantasies. "Once a Ghost, Always a Ghost" quits the album pleasantly with the jazz style familiar from the previous tracks, alonf with some fun marimba solos and distant voices from Caribbean party the band had in the studio.

As a contrast to the previous 2nd album full with fadeouts, there's none of them here, which was a pleasant surprise for me. Also the jazzy rock stuff here is recorded carefully, still leaving space for impressionistic jamming. Recommended warmly for fans of jazz rock and for those who like artistic bands fronted by talented lady vocalists.

Eetu Pellonpaa | 4/5 |

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