People who love Curved Air are usually chasing one arrangement: a rock rhythm section with a violin pushed to the front of it, a keyboard chair that runs from harpsichord to synthesizer, and a lead voice holding the centre while the writing keeps changing shape. The band was never a fixed unit: the line-up turned over between albums, and the players who passed through carried that way of building a song into other groups. That is the thread the six prog rock albums for Curved Air fans below are hung on. Not one of them is a Curved Air record. Each is tied to the band by something you can check — a member who moved, a guest credit, a tune borrowed outright, a later project — and each takes that equipment somewhere else.

Roxy Music — Stranded (1973)

The shortest bridge out of Curved Air leads straight here. The teenage violinist and keyboard player who had just made Air Cut with Curved Air left to replace Roxy Music’s departing synthesizer player, and Stranded is the first album with him in the line-up. Released in November 1973, it reached number one on the UK album chart and spent seventeen weeks on it. Rolling Stone later described this record and the one that followed as marking “the zenith of contemporary British art rock”.

Darryl Way’s Wolf — Canis Lupus (1973)

If Roxy Music is where the Curved Air violin went to work for somebody else, Wolf is where it went out on its own. Curved Air’s violinist left in 1972, after three albums and a hit single with the band, and formed a new group carrying his own name; Canis Lupus arrived the following year as its debut, the first of three Wolf albums before the group broke up. This is the single choice on the page for which no review in a major title could be verified, so it is offered on the connection rather than on a reputation: the same player, the same instrument, one year on from the band he had just left.

Sky — Sky 2 (1980)

Sky is the long game, and this album holds the page’s most literal piece of evidence. The keyboard player who co-founded Curved Air was in Sky for its first two albums, and Sky 2 includes “Vivaldi”, the group’s own version of a Curved Air tune first heard on that band’s debut. The double album went to number one in Britain, and the arrangement of a Baroque organ work lifted from it climbed to number five as a single. Sky was assembled around classically trained players working over a rock rhythm section, which is close to the premise Curved Air started from.

Renaissance — Prologue (1972)

Prologue is where the two bands actually share a piece of tape. Curved Air’s founding keyboard player appears as a guest on the closing track, “Rajah Khan”, playing a VCS3 synthesizer, and at that point the two groups were being looked after by the same management office. Released in October 1972 on EMI-Sovereign in Britain and on Capitol-Sovereign in North America, it is the album on which a rebuilt Renaissance found its shape, though the guitar chair changed again straight afterwards: a five-piece with a lead voice out front and keyboards writing the frame. It is the same equation with piano where the violin was. Our beginner’s guide to the best Renaissance albums lays out what comes next.

Gong — You (1974)

The Gong connection is real but indirect, and worth stating plainly. The bass player on You later assembled a short-lived band whose drummer had come out of Curved Air’s mid-decade line-up, and that band turned up at a Gong reunion concert in Paris. You itself was released on 4 October 1974 on Virgin and recorded at the label’s Manor studio in Oxfordshire. AllMusic, quoted on the album’s Wikipedia entry, calls it Gong’s most “spacy” record, and Rolling Stone has since placed it on its list of the greatest prog rock albums ever made. Our guide to the best Gong albums puts it in context.

Caravan — Cunning Stunts (1975)

This one is not on the usual Curved Air lists and it earns its place on personnel. The bass player who sang on Curved Air’s Phantasmagoria and stayed on for Air Cut joined Caravan in 1974 and remained until 1976; Cunning Stunts was his first studio album with them. It reached number fifty on the UK album chart and lasted a single week there. AllMusic, quoted on Wikipedia, calls it “a solid, varied, and interesting album with plenty of character”. Caravan also carried a viola player, which puts a bowed string back at the front of a rock band.

Where to start

Start with Stranded. It is the most song-shaped of the six, it went to number one in Britain, and its Curved Air link is a person on the record rather than a footnote. Sky 2 is the other easy door, and the one to take first for the borrowed Curved Air tune. Prologue and Cunning Stunts sit in the middle: settled bands, conventional albums, both better on a second pass. You asks the most, and the AllMusic line quoted above is the fair warning. Canis Lupus is the last stop rather than the first — it is the least documented record here, and it makes sense once the trail of players interests you on its own.

Go deeper

If you want the parent band before the branches, our beginner’s guide to the best Curved Air albums walks the studio records in order, and the Curved Air band page keeps the line-up changes straight. Renaissance is the closest neighbour of the six, so where to start with Renaissance and the Renaissance band page are the natural next clicks, and the whole family of these guides sits on the pillar, Prog Rock Recommendations: What to Listen to Next.

For the Canterbury end of the story, the Gong band page shows a scene that swapped players around much as Curved Air did, while the best progressive rock albums of all time is the wide-angle view. Two sister guides run on the same principle: albums for Wishbone Ash fans and albums for Focus fans. A book-length account of the British scene, Beyond the Thames, in the Beyond the Sound series, covers the same ground at greater length.

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