“It was never supposed to happen. No one was supposed to reimagine Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air – a piece of music that, until now, has existed in its own class of expression. No one was supposed to scale the perilous heights of the citadel and come back with another document of the strange festival scenes within.”
True, true. Among diehard aficionados of minimal electronic music, the late 60s piece by Terry Riley stands alone. Inspired by Hindustani classical, jazz improvisations, and experimental recording techniques developed at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, A Rainbow in Curved Air is legendary. But just because something is sacred, that doesn’t make it untouchable. Perhaps it’s the thing we should touch most.
Recorded and engineered between Big Sur, SF, and Sonoma County, A Rainbow in Curved Air by Nico Georis is a new return to the old piece, released last week on Santa Cruz label Spiritual Pajamas. Just over 13 minutes, it’s not quite as epic as the original, but it’s also more approachable. The artist knows it: Promo material describes it as “way less manic, way more listenable.” Instead of covering the even stranger side B on Riley’s original record (“Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band”), Georis offers three originals, including one track (“Vapor”) featuring music generated by a marijuana plant. A gentle comedown for the long slope to summer’s end.
