A RAINBOW IN CURVED AIR

I am incredibly excited to see Terry Riley on the 'chives. Although his music is not usually considered progressive, Terry Riley shares the ethos of many late 60's and early 70's groups. The harmonious convergence between progressive/proto-progressive groups of the era and Terry Riley is a great instance of musical styles toppling boundaries-- and isn't that what prog's all about? Curved Air took it's name from this album, The Who's Baba O'Riley is an appellative and stylistic homage to Riley, and there would be no Tubular Bells without this seminal release.

Riley's music is comparable to minimalist composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, albeit technology based-- tape loops, delays, echos and synthesizers galore. But never does the album lose it's sonic rawness; despite how technological it sounds, Riley's music is always honest and organic, never computerized-- less binary coding, more transcendental meditation. This music emulates the sound and aura of electricity as a natural force, just as Native American music strives to capture that of wind and rain. Bear in mind this was 1967, before 70's krautrock, and even longer before 80's synthpop, techno, or hip-hop mixes although these genres seem to steal the limelight on the electric stage.

I mentioned before how Rainbow coincides with the progressive ethos-- and amongst these shared traits is the necessity for multiple active listens, sitting down with the speakers or the cans and really making an effort to get into the music, a la Pawn Hearts or Zappa. I find the best trick to really "getting" this music is to focus on one component in the music. For example, in the title track, listen only to the two repetitive high notes, then scale back-- see how it fits in with the other parts, understand how subtly it changes, and how these little changes cause gradual shifts in mood and timbre in the whole. Riley's minimalism is a river of sine waves, flexing, contracting, expanding their wavelengths into new shapes as they travel across a grid of time and space. There is even an improvisatory element in the music; each new component jitters in, settles into prominence, then dissipates. You never know what's coming next.

The end of the track seems to receive a bit of Indian-influence: tablas and an interlude reminiscent of a sitar, yet it remains distinctly Riley.

But the real gem here (the piece that got me interested in Mr. Riley in the first place) is the B-side: Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band. I first heard this piece in the 2009 documentary: "Prog Rock Britannia", and was instantly compelled by its eerie hollowness. (BBC's prog rock doc provided the perfect counterpart to the music-- footage of smokestacks and grim city life in the cloudy winter, and I would recommend checking it out just for that.) It starts out with a mass of dissonant sounds so tautly wound that their discordance is comparable a Jackson's Polleck painting-- one feels compelled to pull apart and dismantle the many fragments that are converging upon the canvas, in this case the canvas is an unrelenting and quite haunting drone which trudges along the bass floor.

Terry Riley's soprano sax solo on this track is undoubtedly the highlight of the entire album. The first melancholy soaring note seems to reflect nostalgic confusion, taking flight above the drone of social reality.

This one will be in your heads for days, begging you to come back for a second, third, fourth listen, until you're hooked. This is really another world of music; Riley is a bit of a musical misfit, classical but not in the same stuffed-shirt vein as Beethoven, psychedelic, but not in the Floyd sense. I guess that's why he belongs here on ProgArchives!

It has been more than forty years since this record was released and modern electronic music still has not moved much further than the parameters laid down by this definitive album. Before there was Klause Schultze, Edgar Froese, Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Brian Eno, acid house and trance there was Terry Riley and his desire to perform classical Indian music on modern electronic instruments. Within the first few minutes of side one (A Rainbow in Curved Air) the future of electronic music is spelled out in pulsing modal eighth notes topped with squiggly sitar like sixteenth notes that will become the soundtrack for 70s German rock experimentalists and an entire rave generation in the 90s. On side two (Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band) Riley brings us the sustained homogenous sounds that will become known, under the guiding hands of Brian Eno, as ambient music. Terry's hyper echoed saxophone lines that enter half way through this side add an electronic avant-jazz flavor that was well imitated by The Soft Machine on their IIIrd album.

Despite its popularity with the hippie generation, the music on this album has aged nicely. The Rainbow side is still one of the finest pieces of tonal electronic music I own, and the Poppy Nogood side is nice too, although the virtuoso saxophone excursions do get tiresome after a while. I prefer Riley's repetitive musical figures on the keyboard more than on the saxophone. Another nice thing about this album is the extensive use of reel to reel tape loop echoes, a beautiful sound in itself.

This is one of the most important albums in recent recorded music history. From Riley's Rainbow the baton will be passed to Miles Davis and his Get Up With It experiments, then to Brian Eno and finally Bill Laswell who will complete the picture by adding Jamaican dubbing techniques to every facet and genre of music possible. From these four human pillars will come post-rock, ambient rock, ambient techno, shoe-gaze, nu jazz, acid jazz, acid house, dub, drumnbass, trip- hop, trance and many more styles still to come.

It's hard finding the right words to speak of the genius of Terry Riley. This third album which follows the great "In C", is even better that its predecessor. Instead of minimalistic contemporary classic music we have a purely electronic performance. As In C, this "Rainbow in Curved Air", from which the omonimous Canterbury's band took its name, is based on major chords. There are no percussions of any kind, but this composition has a rhythm and a tempo. The difference with In C is that there are less repetitions. The organ interlude after 6 minutes leads to changes that are not only variations. There's a "relativistic" version of the cover sleeve that's pink with a rainbow split in two parts over a pink sky made of graph paper. It gives the idea of what a "curved air" can be.

The B side hosts "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band". It starts with an organ crescendo. This track is more similar in the structure to the famous "In C" as it's Hortophonic. Overdubbed sax, loops, it's a synthesis of what we now call electronic music. The absence of rhythm gives a sense of "liquidity" to the organ background that after 6 minutes is left alone. Over it there are sounds that make it similar to a mantra. The "Tibet Suite" of Lucia Hwong has many contact points with this suite, but even if this part can sound tibetan, Terry Riley is closer to the jazz atmospheres than to the himalayan heights, so when brass-like sounds come over the organ it sounds jazzy. Think to a more artsy relative like Blade Runner Blues. Then for some time we have just an organ chord until the jazzy or tibetan part restarts. More chaotic and electronic this time. The essence of the composition doesn't change, but it has different "colours". It's after about 13 minutes from the start that we can clearly hear the sax. The basic chord is now minor, and even if from a perspective it adds a bit of dramaticity, from another it's quite sad music and can be a little boring, but just try to imagine Miles Davis playing his trumpet on this base. The theme doesn't change much until the end, there are true or electronic instruments coming and going until the organ is left alone, and the song is over.

Is it an essential masterpiece? I think so, specially if you like Krautrock or Progressive Electronic. This album and its predecessor are where it all started.

Providing sounds 20 years ahead of its time - literally, there's points where you'd swear those were crisp 80s-era digital synths playing - A Rainbow In Curved Air is, of course, an inspirational model for the electronic scene, laying the groundwork for every synthesiser wizard with a perchant for side-long tracks afterwards. What's particularly notable about the title track is how busy it is - this is not a classic era Klaus Schulze composition with glacier-like slabs of electronics moving at a sedate and relaxing pace, there's a lot going on at any particular time. At points it reminds me of Mike Oldfield - check out the organ that kicks in at just over six and a half minutes in and you'll see what I mean. The second track, Pappy Nogood and the Phantom Band, is a free jazz composition reminiscent of some of Robert Wyatt's early solo work that, again, manages to introduce sufficient variation that it never becomes boring. Proof that not only was Terry Riley one of the first to play electronic music, he was also one of the first to play it well.

Without question this is one of the earliest Electronic albums and I would also include Holger Czukay's "Canaxis" album from the same year (1969) in this category. We get two side long suites from this innovative American. "A Rainbow In Curved Air" opens with organ as these hyper sounding synth-like expressions come in around a minute.They sound like they swallowed helium.They stop after 6 1/2 minutes as the organ continues. It sounds like percussion before 9 1/2 minutes then we get a more powerful sound before 11 minutes.It settles back a minute later as percussion and organ lead.The hyper synth-like sounds are back to end it. "Poppy Nogood And The Phantom Band" opens with atmosphere that builds until we get wave after wave overwelming us. A deep hum comes in before 5 1/2 minutes and takes over. Other sounds join in. A powerful atmosphere arrives 10 1/2 minutes then we get these horn expressions that take over and stay until 21 minutes in as atmosphere ends it. This is certainly a must for Electronic collectors out there or anyone who is a big fan of that genre.

OK, so you don't get to hear any guitars or drums. However, you get to hear some truly revolutionary music here.

In his book 'The Ambient Century' an Irish writer Mark J. Prendergast claims the album to be closely related to ambient or just being ambient. Well, the first track isn't really ambient from my perspective. The second track possesses this huge emphasis on tone, but it's too dynamic and intense to be regarded as purely ambient. Also, some time ago I've read in Wikipedia that these two compositions feature just intonation. I don't trust Wikipedia, so if you are seeking music that prominently features this kind of intonation, beware. Now, let's closely examine the character of the music on the record.

The title track is more than just a dense interplay of organ and synth parts; it's a vehicle for entertainment. Most of the parts on the track are so fast that they sound funny, like some kind of a joke on Christmas music, so don't even bother memorizing any of the melodies on it. These melodies could be visually associated with liquid jets, if it helps as an appreciation tip. However, it is groovy, so you might as well bob your head to it. Yes, it's lengthy, and the track is for people who can stand numerous repetitions of the same groove.

The second track is my favorite. I was really enthralled with the music when I heard it on the BBC documentary 'Prog Rock Britannia'. Now that I found out who was the guilty one of this music and what album it came from, I can enjoy 'Poppy Nogood and his Phantom Band' in its entirety, and it's really worth it; take my word for it. In a few different and very bizarre ways the music is quite emotional and entertaining at the same time. To my certain knowledge not a lot of musicians managed to pull off something like this. It's amazing what you can do with those echo machines. Very impressive for 1967. First, there is this track; then there is Pink Floyd's "Meddle". Unbelievable.

Ratings/comments (if you have to ask):

1. 'A Rainbow in Curved Air' - *** ; 2. 'Poppy Nogood and his Phantom Band' - *****

Stamp: 'I like it.'

The recent death of ISAO TOMITA (22 April 1932 / 5 May 2016) made me remember an EP disc which was included as a bonus promotional disc in WENDY (THEN KNOWN AS WALTER) CARLOS's LP album "The Well Tempered Synthesiser" (1969) that my father bought in 1969-1970. I think that at that time my father was discovering Electronic Music during a time when it became popular maybe more thanks to CARLOS's "Switched-On Bach" album from 1968. Both of CARLOS's albums which I mentioned above had the characteristic of having music composed by J.S. Bach played with Moog Synthesisers. At that time those albums were seeing as very "revolutionaty" in music, and particularly "Switched-On Bach" was a very successful and popular album. That EP had a fragment from a work which was played and recorded by another Electronic Music pioneer called TERRY RILEY. I think that it was a fragment from the Side One of this album, called "A Rainbow in Curved Air" (1969), but I can't remember well now. Anyway, recently I had the opportunity to listen to this album as a whole for the very first time.

In contrast to TOMITA and CARLOS, who used synthesisers for their albums, RILEY in this album only used more "conventional" keyboards, like organ and harpsichord, plus some percussion instruments.

The "A Rainbow in Curved Air" title musical piece in the Side One of the LP is inlfuenced a lot by Indian music, with a drone effect done by a single note played in an organ, plus several other organ parts playing scales in a "geometrical" way. The music is so well synchronised that it never loses a beat. Maybe RILEY used some recorded tape loops to create this sequence of sounds. It is so well done that the music never loses its "geometric pattern". And while the repetition of this pattern goes on and on, there is a lot of variety and even improvisation with some keyboard parts who play melodies and scales at the front of the loops. It never tired me as a listener. It has to be remembered that this album was recorded a long time before the arrival of programmed synthesisers and keyboards. So, a lot of work could have been done in the late sixties by RILEY and his production team to achieve this.

"Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band", in the Side Two fo the LP, also has a lot of Influence from Indian Music, with again a drone effect done by some keyboards. This musical piece is less "melodic" than the first, even a bit noisy in some parts, but it is also very good. Again, I could listen to the "geometric effect" produced by the tape loops. In this musical piece RILEY also played on saxophones a lot of melodies and solos, recording several sax parts. This musical piece maybe also has some influences from KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN, another musician who also was a pioneer and contributor to the experimental music of the 20th Century, and another composer which my father listened to sometimes.

A very good electronic / experimental music album from the late sixties. It also influenced PETE TOWNSHEND from THE WHO, who was inspired by RILEY's work to create the keyboard parts which TOWNSHEND played for "Baba O' Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", both being songs which he composed and recorded with THE WHO for their "Who's Next" album from 1971.

This is without a doubt a landmark in the world of minimalist music, and perhaps one of the finest examples of the style you're going to hear. I am not going to get into some intellectual ramblings, which seems to be a big habit when many review his music. I don't have some fancy PhD or from an upper-middle class background, what concerns me is the music. This album no doubt had a huge impact on the progressive electronic scene. You can notice the influence of this album and Terry Riley in general on Galactic Explorers' Epitaph For Venus (you can get this on CD on the Psi-Fi label), for example, and mid period Tangerine Dream probably would not be where they were without Riley. Outside the progressive electronic world Soft Machine was inspired by this. Make no doubt that "Out Bloody Rageous ", for example has this album written all over it, especially all those droning organs and those electric piano passages. "A Rainbow in Curved Air" (the track) features a bunch of overlapping organ and electric harpsichords, it seems a lot of tape loops are being used to create some of these effects heard here. He appears to use a Yamaha organ, rather than the standard Hammond organ. "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band" features not just his reed playing, but a droning organ. This piece is really dark and ominous. It's hard to believe the recordings came out in 1969 (but composed some time earlier, apparently around 1966-67). it's definitely much more in tune with the next decade, as far removed from flower power, and images of psychedelic painted VW buses, as you can imagine but still have a psychedelic trip, but hardly a pop psychedelic trip like you would the Strawberry Alarm Clock's "Incense and Peppermints". This is nothing short of an essential album that's a must have.

This is in many ways on album of opposites or, rather, dualities. Let's see.

As a whole it sounds very much of its time (late 60s) yet it's somehow unexplainably ageless. It utilizes technology (tape loops, delay fx...) yet it's very warm, earthy and spiritual. It also works great as deep listening as well as background music. (Deep listening is of course recommended as usual.)

Comparing the two tracks, title track is hectic and detailed, latter Poppy Nogood etc. much calmer. Title track is also, to me, for sunny days and the other is for nights. Light vs dark, etc.

Title track is, as said, hectic and multi-layered yet it has a soothing effect when you concentrate on listening to it.

A wonderful album filled with rich details, a true tapestry of sound. Handcrafted with heart, vision and skill. Some of the details I want to bring up are the part with tambourines on the first track and on the second the bit with alternating forwards and backwards sax loops.

Criticism? It's over too soon and the title track's abrupt ending is annoying. Still, full five stars is in order here.