Curve R.I.P. 1989-2005
I still remember the first time I heard Curve. It was on 120 Minutes (back when MTV was worth a damn and actually showed videos and shows about videos instead of the pop-culture Velvetta they are now) as the closing video to Coast is Clear from one of their first EPs.
It was a claustrophobic, dense track set to an ethereal, unnerving video. I immediately fell madly in love with Toni Halliday, the Sade of shoegazing filth-pop, and never looked back.
As announced on their website recently, Halliday and her co-conspirator Dean Garcia, have called it a day. Always a bit of a combustible pairing, they produced the kind of sonic blueprint that was later turned into a multiplatinum formula for bands Garbage (which while certainly a formidable act, actually owes it's entire sonic repotoire to Halliday/Garcia), as well as lesser knowns like Joydrop and Lush. They were melodic, atmospheric, dirty, desperate, reflective, cryptic and blunt in ways that made them far more interesting and primal than their contemporaries and followers, who took the sound and made too often a vehicle for the emotionally underdeveloped adolescent angst demographic.
Garcia has a new site, The Doglab, and hopefully he will have some new material soon (his most recent work was with Jeff Beck, and the results were sublime), but Toni, as is always her nature, shows no signs of how to contact/see where she is going. She will appear at her whim, which matches her distanced, diva-like profile. Curve.co.uk actually still has a free download of an otherwise unreleased track, as well as ordering info for their more obscure releases (you can usually find their classic Anxious Records releases in the shops).
Bless you both Toni & Dean, and may whatever you do next come out soon, so that I can act like a complete fanboy again. It has been a wonderful 15 years.
It was a claustrophobic, dense track set to an ethereal, unnerving video. I immediately fell madly in love with Toni Halliday, the Sade of shoegazing filth-pop, and never looked back.
As announced on their website recently, Halliday and her co-conspirator Dean Garcia, have called it a day. Always a bit of a combustible pairing, they produced the kind of sonic blueprint that was later turned into a multiplatinum formula for bands Garbage (which while certainly a formidable act, actually owes it's entire sonic repotoire to Halliday/Garcia), as well as lesser knowns like Joydrop and Lush. They were melodic, atmospheric, dirty, desperate, reflective, cryptic and blunt in ways that made them far more interesting and primal than their contemporaries and followers, who took the sound and made too often a vehicle for the emotionally underdeveloped adolescent angst demographic.
Garcia has a new site, The Doglab, and hopefully he will have some new material soon (his most recent work was with Jeff Beck, and the results were sublime), but Toni, as is always her nature, shows no signs of how to contact/see where she is going. She will appear at her whim, which matches her distanced, diva-like profile. Curve.co.uk actually still has a free download of an otherwise unreleased track, as well as ordering info for their more obscure releases (you can usually find their classic Anxious Records releases in the shops).
Bless you both Toni & Dean, and may whatever you do next come out soon, so that I can act like a complete fanboy again. It has been a wonderful 15 years.
posted by theloniusfunk at 8:27 AM
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