AIRCONDITIONING

Following in the wake of Renaissance Curved Air released their debut album Air Conditioning in 1970. It´s a typical early seventies symphonic prog rock album just with a female singer. There are definitely also traces of sixties rock in some of the songs. It actually reminds me a bit about Jefferson Airplane sometimes. Curved Air has lots of violin in the songs though and it gives Air Conditioning a folky touch even though the violin mostly plays classical notes. Songs like It Happened Today and Vivaldi were later live favorites at concerts.

The musicians are pretty good but I´m not that impressed with Sonja Christina´s voice. She is ok technically with a good vibrato but she sings too much in the same register and it gets trivial IMO. Francis Monkman has to be mentioned as he is the one to look out for in this band with his different keyboards, pianos, organs and synths. John Hawken didn´t live for nothing as Monkman obviously is very inspired by his style.

The sound quality is good for the time, but nothing special.

This is a 3 star album for me as I can hear some exciting things here but the pieces just don´t fit together to make this a special album in my ears. It´s pretty good though but I´ll listen to Renaissance any time before Curved Air if I´m in the mood for some female led symphonic prog.