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On 30/12/2018 at 2:23 PM, BuzzzFuzzz said:

Looks interesting mate, forest dwelling trippers.  Any chance of a few words describing the style???

Thanks, Ant.

 

Hello Ant,

 

Their style is somewhere in the Midlake, Father John Misty, The Decemberists, they rely on the singer's harmonies and good instrumentals.

 

 

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Was browsing around Mr V at Semaphore over the weekend, and I noticed that they had copies of the first three Curved Air albums, remastered by Francis Monkman and released by Esoteric in 2018 as 2 disc sets. Couldn't resist, so I bought a copy of 'Second Album' to test the water.

 

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Curved Air were a band I listened to a fair bit in my high school days, but I never owned any of their albums. A friend of mine had their first 3 LPs, which I had copied to cassette (on fairly lo-fi equipment), so it was the cassette copies that I mostly listened to at the time. I always enjoyed their music, but lost touch a bit with the band, and never managed to find copies of their albums that I would consider purchasing..... until now.

 

I particularly like 'Second Album' (released in 1971) for the song "Everdance", and the rather quirky "Bright Summer's Day '68", and I did come across an earlier CD release a few years ago, which I had a bit of a listen to at the time, but thought the sound quality seemed fairly flat, so passed on it (although the 'listening station' in that store was fairly crappy). I had my fingers crossed regarding sound quality when I saw this release, but Esoteric have a fairly good track record with re-releases, and the standard of the packaging etc. seemed quite good, so figured it was worth a shot.

 

Well, I'm pleased to report that it was definitely worth it, I've had this album on high rotation for the last few days, cranked up the volume a bit last night, and loved it! Playing this on my system now, its one of those situations where I'm hearing something familiar, but in a new light. The remastering of this has been done quite well, and there are good dynamics in the recording. For the first time, I am hearing so much more detail in the instrumentation that I never really noticed before (I am also listening to it on a much better system that I ever did before, of course). The mix is not perfect, perhaps they could have given a bit more prominence to Sonja Kristina's vocals in a few places, but it sounds pretty good all the same. Listening to this now, what really comes across to me is the energy the band has on this album, that is really what makes it work.

 

The packaging by Esoteric is pretty good. There is a booklet written by Malcolm Dome in may 2018 which gives quite a good descriptive history of the making of this their second album, with comments from a number of the band members, and interspersed with band photographs from the time. The first disc is a CD with the original remastered album, with 5 additional live tracks taken from BBC radio recordings. These are live versions of tracks that were on their first album 'Air-Conditioning'. The second disc is a DVD containing a 1971 promotional film (previously unreleased), and live recordings of performances in some European venues. Tracks performed are from their first two albums (but mostly their first). It was interesting to watch this for historical value, but some of the special effects that were added to the videos did get rather annoying (but that was fairly standard for the time).

 

The track that everyone seems to mention in regard to this album is "Back Street Luv", which was released as a single and was a big hit for the band, but its not my favourite. My favourites are the ones below.

 

Everdance. Probably my favourite Curved Air song.

 

 

Bright Summer's Day '68. Some great guitar riffs in this, love the interaction between the violin and guitar, the drumming is full on, keyboards are great, vocals too. Love it!

 

 

 

And I had to post this, You Know. A fairly straightforward rock song, but pretty damn good all the same. I can hear certain similarities to Santana's 'Oye Como Va', and even Sugarloaf's 'Green Eyed lady' in this. Don't know if that was intentional or not, or maybe just what I'm hearing.

 

 

So, a worthwhile purchase, and a good way to reacquaint myself with this band. I have already put in orders for the Esoteric remasters of their first and third albums, 'Air-Conditioning', and 'Phantasmagoria'.

 

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Real slow start here after leaving a friend's shindig at 2am (the last people remaining looked to be there for the long haul as the top shelf came out). Today is quiet in our suburb: no wind, blue skies, no traffic noise, ideal for the 11am breakfast and coffee on the deck. We are feeling the serenity. To complement the mood:

 

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Just now, ThirdDrawerDown said:

Real slow start here after leaving a friend's shindig at 2am (the last people remaining looked to be there for the long haul as the top shelf came out). Today is quiet in our suburb: no wind, blue skies, no traffic noise, ideal for the 11am breakfast and coffee on the deck. We are feeling the serenity. To complement the mood:

 

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Nice pick :thumb:

 

Still listening to some recent Bandcamp downloads, this sounds in some ways to a favourite of mine, Alaskan Tapes, ambient keyboards, easy to listen to.

 

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JJ

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4 hours ago, BuzzzFuzzz said:

Hey Dean, nice one Bro.  We don't get enough Jello 'round these parts.  I'm waiting for more glue to arrive so I can clean up Lard's 'Last Temptation of Reid' and take it out for a spin.

I'm not familiar with Gov't Mule, looks very interesting.  I do have the Pitch Black CD and another remix CD of theirs, pretty cool Kiwi Beats.

 

Cheers.

Ant.

G'day Ant, 

The Pitch Black soundscape lulled me into that nice floaty place between awake and asleep, lovely way to finish a session.

Gov"t Mule team up with Toots Hibberd of Toots and The Maytals for a live rock reggae set. I've got a few of other Gov't Mule but this is a stand out album.

Happy listening and all the best for 2019 man,

Dean .

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dire straits - money for nothing

 

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Mark Knopfler and this album are two of several major reasons I fell in love with guitar and music in general and shortly after started playing the various guitars (late 80s, early 90s)

Edited by zippi
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2 hours ago, Janjuc said:

Great Minds Think similarly, Nick Drake - Five Leaves

 

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JJ

Such a prolific and under-appreciated artist. Kinda similar to Rodriguez. And were at the height of their powers at a similar time. Great thing the latter is still around to be able to enjoy the world having caught up with the vibe. Were Nick still with us, I can easily imagine a similar scenario panning out for him.

Edited by zippi
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PJ Harvey: Let England Shake. The JB 20% off thing drew me in again. This CD was about $8, so I couldn't resist. It's different to her earlier stuff- way more laid back. About $200 later I thought to myself 'time to leave this place, Pete old mate'.

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Edited by Me2also
Uselessness
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25 minutes ago, zippi said:

Such a prolific and unappreciated artist. Kinda similar to Rodriguez. And were at the height of their powers at a similar time. Great thing the latter is still around to be able to enjoy the world having caught up with the vibe. Were Nick still with us, I can easily imagine a similar scenario panning out for him.

Have to agree,

 

Currently spinning NEU! a little bit of Kraut Rock....

 

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JJ

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Having an anime marathon day nighter here in the cool cave with some escapees from Bleak City.  A lot of Shounen, a bit of Ecchi, some Mecha but no Hentai?.

 

This band does some of the intro music to FMA and it's energising raucous guitar rock.They also do music for Bleach

 

Rewrite is the signature song for FMA fans and not to be mixed up with FMA Brotherhood.

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Enthusiasm and energy in spades with this group. Lots of youtube vids of the above songs if you've never heard them and I'm guessing few here would of:)

 

Happy new year you lot!

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The Jam: Beat Surrender. A bit more boring old skool- I can't help myself- I love it. Another CD on sale for $7.20. It's not lossless or anything, but my feet are tapping happily. 

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One of my favourite Rolling Stones songs pre Beggars Banquet 

Never really owned any of these records till recently

They sound so good 

My only experience of them in the 60’s was on On transistor radio top 40

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