9. Terry Riley, A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969) – “A Rainbow in Curved Air”

The first side and 19-minute title track on Terry Riley’s third album, A Rainbow in Curved Air, has been another durable bedtime set for me. It may have started from rumors I’d heard that Riley gave “sleep-in” concerts where people attended with blankets and pillows and he played all night. Whether that’s true or not (I couldn’t find anything to confirm it in a cursory internet search), I see where people get the idea. The play, all instrumental, is light and trippy, high-spirited and mellow, full of synthy sound effects and driven by Riley’s noodling, odd rhythms, and drone that comprehends the observable universe. Psychedelia works for me both light and heavy and this one definitely goes the former route, though the drift has no time to waste, restless and relentlessly probing. Amplified keyboards and synthesizers were very much a novelty in vogue in 1969. Riley is credited with playing an “electric organ,” for example (thought they were generally all electrically powered?). If it veers close to the rinky-dink to modern ears now too familiar with classic keyboard textures, it still hits blustery cheerful and wandering, roving in all good ways. The music is soothing but the tempos and most of the playing is zippy, tangling fast, which creates interesting tension. The end is so headlong and abrupt you almost feel yourself crashing through something. Down the line, when the technology allowed, I played it on repeat some nights and found the ending simply propelling me into the piece again, a kind of perfect loop. By my lights it is the best single psychedelic piece suited to that purpose. It can also be nice to wake to after a night of it, though the nervous energies might take some time to adjust from sleep, like waking up after you’ve had too much coffee the day before. So the sleep-in idea works with caveats, for special occasions perhaps, but specifically in the case of “A Rainbow in Curved Air,” it would be tricky to pull off live. Riley plays all instruments here (electric organ, electric harpsichord, Rocksichord, dumbec, and tambourine) with lots of overdubbing. He finally played it in concert for the first time in 2007 with additional musicians. The impacts of “A Rainbow in Curved Air” are seen in unsurprising places: Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Pete Townshend’s keyboards on the Who’s Who’s Next album, many works by fellow minimalist Steve Reich, the prog band Curved Air, etc., etc.