Ah, Curve.
A woman once told me “Martyn, you break the curve.” I think that was meant as a compliment. Maybe.
Anyways, it’s a pretty good bet that most of you have never heard of the band Curve, or if you have you don’t really know any of their music. That’s ok, they’ve been pretty much under the radar their whole career which is a shame because they’ve always been ahead of the curve so to speak 🙂
Starting off as a fusion of rock and shoegaze with a side order of dance beats, each album they released over the course of their career has been different while still being unmistakably Curve. Their early albums had an underlying industrial sound which morphed into more dance orientated rock with later releases.
They have been compared to Garbage and as a fan of both bands, I can see similarities but whereas Garbage focused on honing their industrial pop / rock sound, Curve continued to experiment.
I bought their second album “Cuckoo” on cassette way back in the day. It’s a pretty dark, heavy album which can be quite a difficult listen if you’re not in the mood for it.
I was already a fan (I think I bought some bootleg of their earlier stuff from a dodgy guy selling tapes at a market). I like their slightly doom laden sound (they do lighter stuff too) and the dancey industrial edge makes them pretty unique.
Unfortunately they broke up a while back but you can get literally everything on Bandcamp where they are still releasing original remixes from a stack of old DAT tapes. I’m still considering whether to drop ÂŁ25 on one of their albums. It’s pretty pricey but I think I kinda have to 🙂
So here’s a list of tracks I would recommend. Frustratingly Spotify only has two of their albums and I would only recommend one of them!
Doppelgänger was Curves first album.
Doppelganger, Lillies Dying, Ice That Melts The Tips, Fait Accompli are all great examples of their early work.
Ten Little Girls, Galaxy and Today Is Not The Day were included in the Doppelganger reissue but are not available on Spotify. Grrrr.
Missing Link, All Of One, Superblaster, Cuckoo (Cuckoo)
Most of Come Clean. Some absolute bangers on here, a lot more dance orientated.
Most of Gift. Another dancey album.
Star, Joy (The New Adventures Of Curve)
noeasylisten 
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