So it just came to you?

"It came to us both at a similar time."

"We were desperately struggling to try and work together and... it was delicate, and we were making these delicate moves towards each other and both of us were very... umm... cos we'd been there together and we both realised what we were taking on... and also we had to convince other people we could work together, cos the last time was like a nightmare: Cor, you fucking worked together before, and look what happened, it all fell apart, you're too flaky, the two of you. So we just sat down in this café and just thought, Fuck it, eh? If they don't like it, we're just gonna do it. And that's it. And if we took it to Anxious and they didn't like it, Fuck that too. We were completely tunnel visioned about it."

This tunnel, signposted carefully with the necessary number of 'Fuck It' signs, of course led Dean and Toni to the point they're at today - in fact, in a pub in Shoreditch but, more expansively, a happy point which finds them with two EPs down, a third currently thundering wilfully around and an album due early next year. And while many bands in this position are not necessarily happy - a crap band whose first three EPs no one has bought, for instance - Curve are simultaneously very popular and pretty damn pleased with both what's in the can and what's coming.

And no one has been slow to lavish praise on Curve. Indeed, although the main pair of Curvers profess total surprise at the phenomenon, it is not uncommon to find two, three or even four paragraphs of justifiable hyperbole preceding the now customary 1,000 word investigation into just how contrived the band really are. But Curve aren't really contrived at all - unless, as seems far from likely, most bands don't decide to work together at some point and most bands' members don't ever say to each other things like, Well, chaps, how about making our debut record and playing a few gigs... followed, perchance, by another record?

One of the things about Curve is that they've got a past. This is the thing on which many pundits dwell. But then the only people who have no past are the sort of shy, retiring fops who clamber out of their bedsits armed with their jangly guitars and with no exception that springs to mind at this hour, proceed to foist on the world at large a curious and noisome mixture of poorly structured, weedy songs and self-pitying whining.

Either that, or they're the kind of misguided prannets who form groups like the Manic Street Preachers and heartily announce that, yes, life has passed them by and, anyway, they preferred to cop their raison d'etre from the weekly music press. Visionaries!

Toni: "The fact is that nobody comes from nowhere - everybody has a past. But we realised that in this situation we had a public past. We thought, They're gonna annihilate us.

"But then we thought, Fuck it, cos we'd made a record that we liked, and that is the biggest achievement. As soon as we pressed up that white label (their debut 'Blindfold EP') we felt some sense of satisfaction, cos we'd actually done something that we really wanted. When it really comes down to it, the fact is that we've been good enough to have record deals on our past projects. Now what the fuck is wrong with that? I've had four record deals - but there's not a down side to that."

The commonly accepted version of Curve's sticky past, by now well-documented, goes like this: Toni and Dean play together in dud electro pop band State Of Play, cut flop records with said outfit, split acrimoniously; Toni inks solo deal with Dave Stewart's Anxious label, is lovingly groomed as tastefully incisive solo singer-songwriter, cuts expensive flop records; Toni and Dean team up again, hatch Curve masterplan for the perfect 'indie' band, and clean up.

In short a certain amount of cynicism, or at least calculated, is implied - as if, before Curve burst onto the scene, neither of the scamps had ever seen a fuzzbox or trod a board in their life. But, even in the days when Anxious were extravagantly marketing the solo Toni, she could be seen late at night, leather jacketed, fanatically dipping her toe into the puddly floors of many a grungey London rock gig at the ULU or its like.

This fact didn't come off the typewriter of one of the shady press officers the band are accused of hiring to ensure their success - I met her at such dives more than once. (In addition, therefore, she has always had pretty good taste).

In fact, what Curve do, melodically and lyrically, has many threads in common with her solo material. It's just all the noise that's different.

"After I did the solo album, I felt I'd got the melodies and was confident I could write good words that I liked, but I was totally unconfident about the music. The difference is that we've got it right this time - we've managed to get down what we wanted to."

Part of the difference, perversely enough, is that the indie-dance expedition left in its wake a trail of what are, by and large, guitar bands who've incorporated elements of dance into their sound. This has provided Curve with a little luck in running.

However, it's unlikely that they were greeted with fervour just because there were a few other monosyllabically named guitar bands knocking around at the same time.

Really the difference between Curve and many of the bands with which they are lumped is that Curve are going to outgun them. The Chapterhouses, Mooses and Slowdives of this world (and presumably those of any other) are already, on their first album or before, sounding warnings that there probably is not much different/better to come. Curve have so much going on in their soaraway slices of noise that it's difficult to envisage them running dry of fresh ideas for a very long time.

JC 001's rap on their first released track, 'Ten Little Girls', informed the listener to expect surprises, the diverse brilliance of the second 'Frozen EP' confirmed that and the lack of compromise apparent on the current 'Cherry EP' continues the slant.

Curve, after all, could have comfortably attained a nice chart placing much earlier than this with a little considered smoothing out of the rough edges and odd shots which pick out their sound from the pack.

Still, fuck it, eh? There's plenty of time - although there is a limit. Toni: "When we decided to do this, we said that we were gonna do it for seven years, because, in seven years' time, Dean's gonna be 40, and he does not wanna get up on a stage at 40 years old."

Dean: "There's no way."

Toni: "There's more to life. I mean, I wanna have some kids, man, I don't wanna be touring, dragging my children everywhere... I wanna kind of get into a bit of space. We're not Fleetwood Mac as I keep on saying - I have no intention to become a dinosaur in any kind of sense. It's not clinical or cynical, it's just that within this certain time, we want to be able to hit a peak, and we've set this thing just to give us a kind of urgency, to spur us on. If you don't have a deadline to work to, you start flapping around.

"You have to retain some kind of dignity - I mean, Simple Minds (whose latest magnum octopus has just squelched forth from the jukebox) have made great records, but you can't keep on pumping out great records for the rest of your life. It's not gonna happen, and when it gets that pointless you should stand back."

"And reflect," adds Dean.

On the other hand, Curve are not about to shy away from the venues habituated by the likes of Jim and the boys.

They know that, while dignity (and glamour and sex, Toni points out) are doubtless important, fine and admirable, there's not much point if your amps don't go up to at least eleven.

Dean: "I'm not really ashamed of wanting our music to be heard by as many people as possible and I wanna play stadiums, you know... no bones about it."

Toni: "No, I can hear our music through 100K rigs, taking peoples heads off. We've always wanted to be louder than anybody else, that's been one of our objectives... just to be fucking loud. I want to hear us through massive systems and the only way you can do that obviously is to play massive venues. No band you ever meet wants to stay like this. Or if they do, they're lying."

(article nicked from 'Volume' issue 2, November 1991)