Curve

[R-Dot-Yung]

No curve thread?

Come Clean is easily one of the best albums I've ever heard. God it just takes me to the 90s in the best way.

[Findus]

For me, Cuckoo is still my favorite Curve album. It takes me back to the summer of '94 when I had it in heavy rotation.
Curve are on BandCamp, and much of their material is available for purchase and download, including Open Day at the Hate Fest, The New Adventures of Curve, and Rare and Unreleased.

http://curve.bandcamp.com/

[KreTafkA]

I am a big fan of Toni Halliday not only in Curve, other projects too Scylla, State of Play, Chatelaine. She made a really amaizing stuff with Dean Garcia. I am really sad that I will never see Curve concert

[Highly Psychological]

One of the most underrated group's ever. Doppelganger is ahead of its time. When you put their records on a loud speaker it sounds truly astonishing.
Those crushing delayed reverberated guitars, electronic beats, the bass! Woooaah.

Its all very Alan Moulder. I think they were very, very influential.

I know people say Garbage rippped them off, and stole their glory but i always thought Curve were way better more experimental and 'out there'.

I like their first wave of material the best 1990-94. Think Fait Accompli is their best track but im liking the song Ten Little Girls the most at the moment.

[frankie teardrop]

garbage took curve's sonic template and made it more hook/pop-song oriented. i like both bands just fine, and there's definitely a derivative influence there. there are even more blatant curve clones, though. lulabox- 'ride on' is pretty much the best curve song that isn't their own creation. love that tune.

that said, doppleganger and cuckoo rule. don't forget about those early EPs! (also collected as pubic fruit in 1992). killer stuff.

[xmd 5a]

http://spceco.bandcamp.com/


Recent stuff from Dean featuring his daughter on vocals. More "pop" than Curve but has a similar vibe.

[piggy]

I totally heart Cuckoo and Come Clean. I think most of their catalog is out of print now, which is a shame. Whatever record company is in charge of their stuff needs to put together some nice reissues. If lesser-known bands like Medicine and Codeine can get reissues now, then Curve should, too.

[wizfan]

Toni has two of the most beautiful eyes a woman has ever had.

Oh, I like her voice too.

But THOSE EYES, man. DAMN.

[R-Dot-Yung]

Does anybody know where I can find the Advanced Tape of Come Clean? It was also called Curve: Unmixed, Unmastered And Not Sequenced
I'd murder an ant for it...

[Jinsai]

Curve is a band that I've only heard a small amount of material from, but I've always (for the most part) liked what I heard. What would be a good album for me to first dig into?

[Findus]

^^^^
I would say either Cuckoo or Come Clean. Gift is also a great album. My favorite EP is Frozen, and there are gems on the Blindfold EP as well. It's hard to suggest just one album as a starter.

Oh, also, here's Trent and Flood's remix of Missing Link (Screaming Bird mix), which can be found on the Rare and Unreleased collection.

[ghostaustin]

For me, Cuckoo is still my favorite Curve album. It takes me back to the summer of '94 when I had it in heavy rotation.
Curve are on BandCamp, and much of their material is available for purchase and download, including Open Day at the Hate Fest, The New Adventures of Curve, and Rare and Unreleased.

http://curve.bandcamp.com/

Thanks for the link! I've been trying to find a full version of Worst Mistake ever since I played Frequency over a decade ago!

[frankie teardrop]

yeah, she definitely made an appearance in the babes thread. one of my best friends looks a LOT like her, too. oof.


@Jinsai , you're a shoegaze fan, right? i'd say go for doppelganger and cuckoo- the former which is a era masterpiece (has the whole madchester drum thing going on as well as more fuzzed out dreampop sounds) and the latter which is grimier and darker.

[dlb]

As I've stated on this forum countless times I'm on a massive Curve binge every now and then and just recently got sucked into Open Day at the Hate Fest which is way underrated. Songs like you don't know rank among the very best of their catalogue. And I have to agree, although I like me some Garbage, it's just nuts how much ahead of their time Curve was and I absolutely envy everyone who got to see them live. After the 1994 incarnation of NIN, Curve are my top "would have wanted to see live"-band.

My favorite records of theirs would be Doppelgänger and Come Clean. If you are more into guitar orientated stuff you should get Doppelgänger and Cuckoo aswell as their earlier EPs (or just get the pubic fruit EP collection). Come Clean marks their step into more electronic driven music. Gift is a great album, too.

Or just try The Way of Curve which combines their most well known songs remastered and a second disc with more obscure stuff which is also pretty good. People claim that the mix of this best-of has some clipping flaws, but I couldn't hear any. Maybe they ironed out the mistakes with a re-pressing.

Favorite songs: fait accompli (the best IMHO), Doppelgänger, clipped, missing link, perish, weekend, recovery, you don't know, something familiar, superblaster, on the wheel, killer baby...

I still have to give The New Adventures of Curve a proper listen some time. I basically haven't listend to it at all after its release. Toni's solo stuff is also very recommandable, but not as good as Curve by itself.

@Jinsai : their bandcamp page is a gold mine and the number one place you should be right now!

@all: If you're on Facebook then be sure to add Dean to your list since he's posting some Curve gems (press picutres and anecdotes) every now and then aswell as his own projects (see above).

Man this band...

[wizfan]

Doppelganger is such a soothing album. The first Curve track I ever heard was Hell Above Water, so Doppelganger felt so weird!

[ChipRock]

Much underappreciated, in my opinion. Reissues of their first two albums - on CD and Vinyl, with extras - have just been announced, so now is a good chance to discover them.

https://3loopmusic.tmstor.es/index.p...&section=CURVE

Of course NIN fans will probably be aware of them through the Trent Reznor remix of Missing Link, but they're worthy of note through regularly working with Alan Moulder and Flood, and their remixes of Gary Numan and The Cure. They'll also come up in discussion with regards to Garbage, who were - back in the day - sometimes accused of ripping off Curve's sound.

If you're not familiar with their work I strongly recommend checking them out; you can get pretty much everything they've done, digitally, through Bandcamp, and official music videos are up on YouTube:

https://curve.bandcamp.com/music

https://www.youtube.com/user/CurveVEVO/videos

Sadly a planned reunion fell through, but hopefully there will be more new things to post about here. Old fans like me will certainly be excited about a range of t-shirts that I believe are being made available in the near future.

[wizfan]

Huge fan. Toni is a goddess. And she's still friends with Trent, as she was included in the Special Thanks section of the Hesitation Marks liner notes.

[henryeatscereal]

Love the band, but it's a bitch to get their physical albums; i gotta listen to "Public Fruit" this week

[eversonpoe]

Huge fan. Toni is a goddess. And she's still friends with Trent, as she was included in the Special Thanks section of the Hesitation Marks liner notes.

she's married to alan moulder! had no idea. her voice really is incredible.

showed my wife some of their stuff the other day because a) i hadn't listened to it in forever and b) she had never heard them, and high-school sarah would have been SUPER into them. only their later two albums were on spotify, which aren't quite as good as the first two. i find them a bit unbalanced. the "darker" tracks are amazing, but the more upbeat ones just don't hold my interest. looking forward to the reissues of the first two albums so i can hear them again for the first time since i was probably 13.

[thevoid99]

I love that band. Toni is so beautiful.

[ad infinitum]

Absolutely love early nineties Curve & still listen to it regularly (today, in fact). I remember hearing Doppelgänger back in 1992 & immediately buying the cd, plus Pubic Fruit & Cuckoo. I'm not a big fan of shoegaze/dreampop but damn, Doppelgänger is just fucking immaculate in its sound, & you want to bathe in that lush, sensual voice of Toni's.

The later stuff is not bad, but it just doesn't touch the early material. I'd still love to see a reunion, though.

[piggy]

I heart Cuckoo and Come Clean... and yes, Toni is sexy (especially in the video for "Missing Link".) This thread has reminded me that I need to give more of the early stuff some attention.

[frankie teardrop]

mindblowingly good band, true originals- dark, sexy, brutal. laid the groundwork for garbage, changed the landscape, and successfully melded shoegaze and club-centric electronics.

i found their earlier EPs (cherry, frozen, etc.) and doppleganger to be cheap over the years, but perhaps they've gone up over time... looking forward to ordering the cuckoo LP reissue, though!

tossing the ten little girls/blindfold 7'' into my DJ bag after reading this thread <3.

[frankie teardrop]

always loved toni's cheeseball late 80s synthpop record, too.



and even though garbage were considered the successors to curve, there was always lulabox (whose vocalist also sang on curve's cover of 'i feel love'):

[onthewall2983]

She sang back-up on one of Robert Plant's solo albums, something I found interesting.

I got into them a little during my shoe-gaze/NIN period. I thought they were cool for being kind of a middle-road between those two sounds.

[Substance242]

Bought new 2CD Cuckoo and Doppelgänger (label "3 loop music"), and the latter one is bad, as someone already found out:
https://www.discogs.com/Curve-Doppel...#comment818840
So, just beware.

[ChipRock]

So, just beware.

Shit. That's bad luck there. My copy is fine. I think some of the tracklists on the cover art were incorrect or incomplete to a minor degree, but I wouldn't worry too much about that.
Otherwise I'm very impressed with how these reissues have been put together. The artwork is nice and I enjoyed the sleeve notes too. It goes without saying that the music is top notch. I've not been able to give it all a listen on a proper stereo yet so I can't comment on the remastering. I always thought the original Cuckoo should have sounded a little weightier, so I look forward to checking that out particularly.
Also holding out for t-shirts that were promised previously.

[Substance242]

Shit. That's bad luck there. My copy is fine.

Got update from my local shop where I bought it, they acknowledged there really is a problem and I will get new "release" sometime later this month when they have it.

Update: Btw, Unreadable Communication (Cuckoo) is magnificient, epic, when the synth comes creeping in after 2 minute mark, you feel SOMETHING is going to happen, aaah. As if with Moulder and Flood something could go wrong, right? :-) Till now I had only The Way of Curve, so yay, new experiences. :-)

[Substance242]

Just FYI, my Doppelgänger CD replacement is OK, thumbs up.

[azad_ninja]

"Gift" is even better now after 1000 spins. I miss this band