The record
At a glance
- Credited artist
- Curved Air
- Released
- 1990
- Recorded
- July 1973
- Tracks
- Eight
- Curved Air group demos
- Four
- Authorised reissue
- Repertoire CD, 2011
Why it matters
A contested archive that preserves the end of the Air Cut era
Lovechild preserves material from Curved Air's unstable final months in 1973, including the substantial Seasons and three other group demos. Without the release, that work might have remained inaccessible.
It is not a conventional 1990 studio album. The recordings date from July 1973, and only four of the eight tracks are Curved Air group performances.
The remaining material consists of one John O'Hara miniature, two Eddie Jobson-associated pieces and one recording tied to Kirby Gregory's departing lineup.
Sonja Kristina later described the original issue as unauthorised and objected to unrelated rough outtakes being placed beside her demos. That provenance is central to honest listening.
A licensed Repertoire edition appeared in 2011 with new liner notes and permission from the musicians and Warner interests. It provides a more responsible catalogue context without turning the original assembly into a planned 1973 LP.
1973 / 1990
1973 demos assembled and issued seventeen years later
Air Cut introduced the lineup of Kristina, Mike Wedgwood, Eddie Jobson, Kirby Gregory and Jim Russell. Soon afterward, Jobson moved toward Roxy Music while Gregory and Russell left for Stretch.
Kristina prepared demos after Warner Bros. declined to continue the contract. The four group recordings used replacement drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa and Icelandic guitarist Thordur Arnason alongside Kristina, Wedgwood and Jobson.
The material was recorded in London in July 1973 under Clifford Adams's supervision. It remained unreleased as Curved Air dissolved.
In March 1990, Steve Price mixed the archive at CTS Studios with Declan McGovern assisting. The resulting eight-track album appeared through Essential/Castle later that year.
The assembly combined recordings of different authorship and performing identity under one Curved Air credit. Kristina's later account specifically distinguishes her intended demos from rough outtakes connected more closely to other musicians.
Repertoire revisited the title in 2011 after obtaining permission, presenting a remastered CD with new historical notes. The underlying audio remains a 1973 archive, not a reunion session.
Who plays where
Several lineups inside one misleading artist credit
Kristina is the clearest link among the four group demos. Her voice and acoustic guitar keep long-form material such as Seasons attached to song rather than instrumental display.
Jobson's keyboards and violin carry the classical continuity after Way's departure. His separate miniatures also reveal why a single album credit can blur different creative contexts.
Wedgwood and Pilkington-Miksa provide a Curved Air rhythm section that never existed on a prior released studio album in exactly this form.
Arnason enters after Gregory's departure, so his guitar belongs to the later demo phase. Gregory and Russell appear only on The Flasher within this assembly.
O'Hara's forty-three-second opening is a self-contained arrangement, not an overture composed by the full band for a projected album.
The 1990 mixing team makes disparate tapes playable as one sequence. Sonic continuity created at mixing must not be mistaken for common original intent.
Demo character
Rough studio evidence from chamber miniature to extended song
Lovechild sounds like archive because it is archive. Balance, finish and arrangement density vary, and those differences reveal changing purpose more honestly than a polished remaster could erase.
The Curved Air demos retain the rock-classical blend of Air Cut but often leave more room around Kristina. Seasons stretches beyond eight minutes without the orchestral certainty of a completed master.
Exsultate Jubilate and Joan are chamber-sized fragments. Their brevity changes the pacing but does not make them designed interludes in a confirmed album sequence.
The Flasher has the most direct guitar-rock profile and a different personnel base. Its drive belongs to the Gregory-Russell configuration rather than the Arnason-Pilkington demo group.
The Dancer and The Widow present more compact vocal forms, while Paris by Night closes with extended keyboard-led atmosphere. The compilation's interest lies in discontinuity: listeners hear several possible futures after Air Cut, none developed into a finished Curved Air studio programme.
Track guide
Eight recordings with four different provenances
Exsultate Jubilate
O'Hara's keyboard arrangement opens in under a minute with ceremonial classical colour. It functions as a found miniature within the compilation, not a verified Curved Air overture. Its polish and brevity create an immediate contrast with the longer demo textures that follow.
Lovechild
The title song is one of the Curved Air demos and places Kristina at the centre of a relationship defined by origin, dependence and identity. Acoustic foundation, keyboards, violin and electric guitar accumulate around the voice rather than beginning at full rock weight. The arrangement gathers speed and force near its end, suggesting how the demo might have developed in a finished session. Its incompleteness is productive: the listener hears a strong song before final production choices closed its possibilities.
Seasons
At nearly nine minutes, Seasons is the archive's central Curved Air composition. Time passes cyclically, but emotional movement feels slower and less certain.
Kristina sustains long lyrical lines above spacious keyboard harmony. Violin and guitar gradually add pressure instead of dictating the opening.
The structure unfolds through extended returns rather than sharp suite divisions. Kristina later called the piece too static for her present taste, a useful first-person response that also identifies its deliberate spaciousness. As a demo, it offers a developed composition without claiming the final shape a released 1973 master might have taken.
The Flasher
This recording belongs to the Gregory-Russell configuration rather than the four later group demos. Guitar attack and direct rhythm distinguish it immediately.
The title frames public performance as exposure, spectacle and provocation. Gregory's lead presence gives the track a harder rock surface linked to the Air Cut lineup. Its inclusion is historically interesting but should not be used to describe the sound of the entire collection.
Joan
Jobson's short instrumental preserves an idea he and Kristina had been developing, but the issued version lacks her intended vocal component. Keyboard and violin sketch melody without building a complete band arrangement. Kristina specifically identified Joan as an example of rough material appended to the compilation. Its fragmentary state is therefore part of its provenance, not a deliberate minimalist statement by Curved Air.
The Dancer
One of the Curved Air demos, The Dancer turns movement into identity. Performance can be freedom, discipline and a role observed by others.
Kristina's vocal maintains poise while rhythm section and guitar create a more compact frame than Seasons. Violin and keyboards add lift without converting the song into a classical showcase. The piece suggests a viable concise direction for the post-Air Cut group.
The Widow
The fourth group demo centres absence and the social identity left after loss. Its title names a condition rather than narrating a complete biography.
A measured arrangement keeps attention on Kristina, with instrumental responses deepening rather than explaining grief. The demo's restraint separates it from The Flasher's outward rock posture. Placed seventh in 1990, it prepares the nocturnal instrumental space of the closing track.
Paris by Night
Jobson's extended closer evokes a city after dark through keyboards and violin rather than a sung travel narrative. The piece moves in atmosphere and instrumental contour, allowing elegance and unease to coexist. Its separate authorship makes it an epilogue to the assembly, not a resolution written for the four Curved Air demos. Ending here reinforces the compilation's real subject: several unfinished 1973 directions sharing an archive.
No designed sequence
Love, time and performance without album-era unity
Lovechild was not designed as a concept album. Its 1990 order joins recordings with different performers, authors and initial purposes.
Time nevertheless recurs. Seasons measures cycles, The Widow lives after an irreversible event, and Paris by Night turns a place into a particular hour.
Performance connects The Flasher and The Dancer from opposing angles: exposure can be aggressive spectacle or controlled bodily art.
Identity is unstable throughout the release itself. The title asks about origin while the Curved Air name covers tracks that are not all group performances.
The most honest unifying theme is archival afterlife. Every piece reaches the listener long after its first context disappeared.
Recycled origins
Air Conditioning imagery recut for an archival object
The 1990 cover combines imagery from the front and back of Air Conditioning. It borrows the debut's visual authority for material recorded three years later by very different personnel.
That recycling creates instant Curved Air recognition but also illustrates the release's central problem: a unified brand is placed over heterogeneous recordings. The package should not be read as evidence that the 1973 musicians planned a return to the debut's picture-disc concept. Repertoire's 2011 liner notes improve the object by making provenance part of presentation rather than leaving the eight tracks to imply a conventional album.
A disputed release
From unauthorised issue to licensed restoration
Essential/Castle released Lovechild in 1990, seventeen years after the London demos were recorded. The tapes were mixed at CTS that March.
Kristina characterised the original release as piracy and said the band neither authorised it nor received royalties. She also objected to unrelated outtakes being presented with her demos.
The album did not represent the 1990 Curved Air reunion performance; that concert belongs to the separate Alive 1990 history. In 2011 Repertoire issued a licensed remastered CD after obtaining permission, with new notes that placed the recordings in context.
Reception has consequently focused as much on provenance as music. Seasons is often singled out as the strongest composition, while the assembly remains difficult to evaluate as one intended work.
Archive ethics
A document to annotate, not a canon entry to simplify
Lovechild preserves the only issued record of a short-lived Curved Air configuration with Arnason and returning Pilkington-Miksa. It also documents Jobson and Gregory at the moment their paths were leaving the group, though their separate pieces should not be folded into one band session.
The collection complicates discography numbering. It is better described as an archival demo compilation than as Curved Air's seventh studio album.
Its history offers a lesson in catalogue ethics: access to unreleased music does not erase performers' interest in consent, payment and accurate attribution.
The lasting value is documentary. Heard with proper annotation, the record reveals possibilities after Air Cut without pretending those possibilities became a finished album.
Which edition?
The 2011 reissue is the responsible reference
Choose the 2011 Repertoire edition for responsible catalogue context. It does not change the archive's origin, but its authorisation and notes matter.
Hear Lovechild, Seasons, The Dancer and The Widow as the four Curved Air group demos before comparing the other four recordings.
Do not judge demo balance as if it were a finished 1973 production. Listen for composition, ensemble possibility and personnel change.
Use Joan to understand how fragmentary the archive can be; use Seasons to hear its most sustained realised form. Vocals remain central to the core group material, while instrumental fragments and the closing piece account for only part of the sequence.
A listening path
Separate the Curved Air demos from their companions
- Read first: Establish the 1973 recording and 1990/2011 release history before treating the sequence as an album.
- Hear the four: Play Lovechild, Seasons, The Dancer and The Widow as one Curved Air demo subset.
- Hear the departures: Compare The Flasher, Joan and Paris by Night as adjacent musician histories.
- Notice the frame: Ask how the O'Hara opener and recycled debut artwork manufacture apparent unity.
- Return to Seasons: End with the composition that most fully demonstrates what the unfinished phase could hold.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Lovechild official discography entry — Curved Air
- Lovechild remastered catalogue — Apple Music / Repertoire
- Love Child release classification — AllMusic
- Sonja Kristina interview: Air Hostess — Record Collector
- Sonja Kristina career interview — The Arts Desk
- Lovechild 2011 edition — Repertoire catalogue via JPC
- Lovechild programme and personnel review — Hooked on Music