A Rainbow in Curved Air
Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air is a record of two pieces, each roughly 20 minutes in length, that are extremely contemplative at their core. Both are rooted in an “om”-like hum (an elegant image of “curved air”) and they play off of it in very different ways.
“A Rainbow in Curved Air” tests the core. It’s packed with flutters of sound, zips and zaps, hems and haws, sometimes cluttered, often airy. The base (and bass) of the piece is keyboard-driven, an obvious precursor to what Neu and Kraftwerk would do along the neon-lit edges of Krautrock. It’s very futurist in all meanings of the word. (The record was released in 1969.)
Though the instrumentation of “Curved Air” is almost entirely keyboard, there is an organic growth to the piece, a warm-up, a step forward, a leap beyond. Its structure is narrative and linear (or it gestures enough to impose it), but the expressions within are manic, the nature of nature their root.
“Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band” goes a different way. It gently tugs on the om, stretching it, folding it and softly falling into its embrace. The solid tone — never changing beyond a slight pulse — points and counterpoints with the melodies that I would call “blaring” except they’re far too serene. They’re pitched like a mew or caw, a sound that comes from an animal. But there is drama. Twelve minutes into the piece and we are thrown into taut flights of the bumblebee, swirls of clarinet colliding and unifying into a growing plague.
It’s a fabulous thing to play at absurdly high volumes. It’s not even musical at that point; it’s the science of sound itself. Vibrations.
Curved Air is a beautiful work. I can’t speak definitely enough of Riley to say how important this is to his legacy or how this was received, but it feels like the whole fucking deal. Despite being shaped to the physical limitations of the two-sided vinyl and the market demands of the album, Curved Air seems to exist to exist and from time to time we are lucky enough to interact and say hello. More than art, it is alive.
OK, now I fully understand the meaning of the Who’s song title “Baba O’Riley”. Clearly Pete Townshend had been listening to this record a lot. (I already knew it was a reference to Terry Riley, but I hadn’t heard any of his early works.)
you should try to find this on vinyl just for the experience of the silence that comes at the end of the track. i do this with philip glass’s music in 12 parts sometimes and it’s so strange and lovely.
This piece was my introduction to the world of minimalist music when I first heard it in 1971. As a piece of music, it was something that required the listener to really pay attention to what was being played to be able to enjoy the subtle variations within the piece. “A Rainbow in Curved Air” should remain in the pantheon of musical genius.
Fans of the radio series version of Douglas Adams’ THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY will be pleased to know the title track is the one used for background in much of the book’s speeches.