Curly's Airships is a double CD by Judge Smith, released in October 2000. Smith regards the album as a new form of narrative rock music, which he calls "songstory". Curly's Airships tells about the R101 airship, crashing in France during its maiden overseas voyage in 1930. Amongst many others, Peter Hammill, Hugh Banton, Arthur Brown, David Jackson, John Ellis and Pete Brown perform on the project. Smith believes that the 2 hr 20 min work might be one of the largest and most ambitious single piece of rock music ever recorded. Production Smith worked on the project for many years, between 1993 and its release in 2000. The writing alone took two years. Smith was able to finance the project thanks to a small grant from the National Lottery, distributed by the Arts Council in a scheme called A4E, Arts For Everyone. A part of the recording was done in the Cathedral of Saint Pierre in Beauvais, the city near the R101 disaster, where Hugh Banton played the organ. Another part was recorded in Cardington parish church, which was the local church for the Airship Works, and yet another part was recorded inside the (extremely large) R101's shed at Cardington. Mixing and mastering of the album, by David Lord, took almost a year to complete. Release On HTV, 10 July 1997, a documentary about the project was shown in the arts series Frieze Frame. The film contains parts where Lene Lovich can be seen, playing Marthe, Princess Bibesco, who was Lord Thomson's lover. However, Lene Lovich/Marthe Bibesco does not perform in the songstory. The release of Curly's Airships on 5 October 2000 coincided with the 70th anniversary of the R101 disaster of 1930. On exactly the same point where the original airship crossed the English coast on its maiden voyage to India in 1930, some of the creators of Curly's Airships launched two model airships on their way to France, each one carrying a voucher for a free copy of the album. Themes Musically, Curly's Airships embraces rock, jazz, tango, Indian music and eerie atmospherics, with repeated passages identifying key characters' appearances. Basically, the line-up is vocals, guitars, organs, bass and drums, with some saxophone touches. There is no rhyme and no regular metre, and the vocal lines of many sections are single, non-repeating tunes. This sets Curly's Airships musically apart from many "regular" rock or rock opera albums. As