CURVE Vinilo y CD

Review: Cuckoo was their second full length from Curve - Toni Halliday on vocals and guitar with Dean Garcia - and saw its release in 1993. This album was heavier, focused and featured stronger, more aggressive rhythms that evolved from their first album. Heavily influenced by bombastic urban and electronic beats but favouring shoegaze effects on the guitars, making for a unique combination that made Cuckoo stand out from the rest, ultimately predating similar sounds from bands like Garbage. This album holds key tracks like the amazing 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus' as well as the singles 'Missing Link' and 'Super Blaster'. The effects of Curve are still being felt today by those who discover them and fans of the producer Flood should definitely be aware of this album if they are not already. This reissue comes on limited numbered 180- Gram pink & purple vinyl LP complete with an insert.

Review: Curve are best known among music lovers as one of the few English 90s bands to span the cross-section of industrial dance music and shoegaze and to bring that sound to the alt-mainstream. Their debut studio album, Doppelganger, was the splash album that defined this sound; a maximal, euphoric statement in walls of crunching chords-n'-drums from Dean Garcia and a set of barely-skating-the-mix vocals from Toni Halliday. Purely noisy, cathartic and determined in its slice of style, the likes of 'Lillies Dying', 'Split Into Fractions', and 'Ice That Melts The Tips' all evoke sonic seances of the wildest kind, as if each calling out to some extradimensional, omniscient beast.

Review: MOV's all-in-one Curve reissues campaign continues strongly with this new iteration of 'Blindfold', the industrial shoegaze band's debut EP. Establishing the sound they would inevitably grow into, and more or less own, for at least a decade to come, tracks such as 'Blindfold' are as emotional as they are driving, pitting Liz Fraser-esque vocals (courtesy of titan Toni Halliday) against industrial hip-hop/rock beats. The hip-hop influence is further bolstered by a rare rap feature on a shoegaze tune: that of JC-001, the one-time 'fastest rapper in the world'. The formula of a Curve track should be clear enough on finishing this EP; stark, mysterious, sexy and strange, and always with a sense of self-assured, yet pensive, forward propulsion.

Review: Curve's music represents the electronicization of shoegaze, coming at a turning point in the 1990s in which post-industrial sounds and hoover guitars came naturally together. While the duo's sound seems contemporary, 'Frozen', their second EP, came relatively early on in their career. Imagine MBV but with well-mixed instruments and perhaps even a suitability for the club environment - these ingredients form the basis of the vindictive 'Zoo' or the rapturous 'Coast Is Clear'. This reissue comes as a clear white marble edition; confident road-trip struts, fluorescent guitar washes, and gorgeously lethargic vocals complete Curve's neo-shoegaze picture.