"Ladies and gentlemen, please leave the building, there is a fire. Please evacuate immediately. Believe me, there's a fire in the building, get out."

Security ushered everyone down the stairs. After four years of time spent apart, Curve finally orbited back to the stage and have released a new EP and remixes by Paul Van Dyk, Lunatic Calm and Witchman; however, fate had something else in mind and the show could not go on without a mishap. Five long flights of stairs later (the only way out), all seven hundred people in the audience and the band mingled on the streets of London waiting for the building to burn down.

Representatives of Lush, Bananarama, Elastica, Jesus and Mary Chain, Placebo, Led Zeppelin and everyone else found themselves wondering what actually caused the evacuation since no towering inferno to light up the sky. After the firemen checked out the joint, everyone tramped back up the stairs. Right, take two.

It seemed like such a good publicity stunt with a new EP on Universal entitled Chinese Burn and a fire staged during the debut concert. Nope, just an anomaly. Toni jumps right into her sarcastic reply, "Absolutely, yeah, we did it completely on purpose. There's all these conspiracy theories going on but basically, it had fuck all to do with us. We wouldn't have done that - we were just building up to the killer four songs of the set. It freaked me out, I thought there was going to be a great big fireball on the stairs."

Curve's reappearance has caused a similar fireball tearing down the dry, dusty corridors of where they left off a few years ago. The new single has an inspiring, melodic remix by Germany's Paul Van Dyk that will leave no trance fan unhappy. The original version of the track has gotten added to college radio stations east and west, as well as being added to alternative stations around the country, time has finally caught up with Curve. After this show in London, Curve's directing duo of Dean Garcia and Toni Halliday took some time to talk about where they've been and what they are up to now.

When they last passed through, Dean and Toni mixed hard guitars, electronics and cool and harsh vocals in a manner akin to what the Prodigy do now... only they had the guitars way, way, way upfront and washed out the beats and vocals into the incomprehensible range. Toni finishes off Dean's explanation about the core of the old Curve tracks, "It was just smothered with loads of guitars, you go back and listen to it and there's some fuckin' cool beats. Loads of stuff going on in 1990 when we started - no one was listening." At that time, the combination didn't break the lock of huge success and, after being together for many years, the time had come for Toni and Dean to take some time off from each other.

Dean "noodled off in spaceland" in his home studio, completely disillusioned with the britpop bands that amounted to no more than "chirpy bollocks", figuring he had lost touch with modern music. Toni laid down some vocals on Leftfield's smash "Original" and Freaky Chakra's "Budded on Earth to Bloom in Heaven" while forming an all-girl rock outfit called Bud. Simultaneously and independently, Toni and Dean discovered the allure of bands like the Chemical Brothers and Underworld. Toni dropped out of her band, who continue on as Scylla, and got back into things with Dean.

The new deal between the two song writers limited the experiment to six weeks. If nothing happened.... Curve never resurfaces. Luckily, their mutual interests in electronic stylings and a refreshed energy between themselves made the reunion easy and prolific. Dean and Toni came out with an entire album at the end of that period. Rather than rush things, as Toni suggests they might have in the past, they put out a couple of tracks on their own label, Fatlip, and went back into the studio, polishing the songs up further and writing more.

The results of that second pass on the songs shines through on the new material. Rather than drowning the techno elements out, the spiky guitars received a curbing. Tracks like the energetic "Chinese Burn", the moody "Forgotten Sanity" and the more celebratory "Coming Up Roses" reflect that extra attention to the production. Toni elaborates, "If we were going to have a spiky guitar, we'll have the one that's right and it will come in between and start to really think about chord arrangement of guitars. Rather than, let's just plough through loads of fucking chords, here we go... Have one great riff there and then, this other great riff, a bit of voice here and then another great riff. Everything had its place rather than it being all about chaos."

Dean quietly interjects, "But the chaos theory's also really exciting." And then Toni continues on, "Yeah, but do it specifically, on a track, not over the whole album. You've got this track on the album called 'Dogbone', which is total fuckin' mayhem. We went in there and said, let's make the most unlistenable track we can. We went in there with that sole purpose. Dean might have had an argument or something."

The synergy between these two conspirators ranges about as far from arguing as possible, while Halliday dominates most of the interview, Dean periodically interjects his thoughts which she promptly supports and expands. As they both have more experience in the music industry now, they have refined their writing craft, their sound and their interactions. At the time of their split, this couldn't have seemed further away. Dean remembers, "I wasn't particularly happy with the way it was going and all the shit that was going on, being eaten up by this machine, this treadmill of shit. You have to step off and protect yourself. The thing with Toni and I, we're very close, it can take these distances. So, just getting to do something else, being apart from each other, having time off from each other makes things stronger."

Regardless of the fortitude of their renewed relationship, stepping onto a stage for the first time in years as Curve did not come risk free. The prornoter booked the band into a small venue and they wondered if even that would sell out with less than a thousand tickets. The promoter later suggested (after it sold out) that it could have been in a venue three times the size. Bands have come and gone in four years - what happened to Guns 'n Roses? What happened to so many bands who didn't come out after a change in trends? When the band first took their trepidatious steps on stage and played chords in front of an audience again, Toni definitely looked nervous. Less than a third of the way through the first song, she regained that confidence. She argues that her nerves only lasted "two seconds" but acquiesced-proudly stating the cornplete disappearance of nerves by the end of the first song.

As the big-haired, back-combed goths at the front screamed out the lyrics to "Faît Accompli", it seemed like nothing had changed. The new material, which dominated the set, found much more reliance on the overwhelming bass and rhythms. The set crossed over and branched from the classical guitar-drenched Curve into the new, leaner, more electronic Curve. This forms the basis of a new approach they have created for playing live.

Most bands don't alter their song structure much between shows. Regardless of their basis, electronic or other, the set list might change but the performance remains fairly similar from night to night. Toni wants to cater to each different audience, whether they're dance-orientated or industrial and play mixes suitable to the crowd. At the same time, they intend to mix in elements that may be foreign to those types in an effort to broaden the musical horizons of their fans. So the set that might get used supporting Nine Inch Nails would be drastically different from the one used to play at an underground. Toni supports their idea, "It has to change and develop; it has to be exciting for us. I feel confident with Dean that he's completely capable of approaching each venue and each thing in the way that it needs to be approached. Rather than, this is what we do and we can only do this."

Of course, Curve's ability to chameleon between one type of show and another only counts for half the deal since the people have to accept it. Toni doesn't seem too worried, "It's got to be done. Music can't just keep going on like that, in this great line."

Toni's plans for future remixers also reflect her desire to keep things ever-changing. "I am a massive Dre fan, I would love him to do a remix of 'Alligators', and then I still want Trent [Reznor of Nine Inch Nails] to do a remix and I really like Crystal Method. Straight away there you go - industrial, big beat, gangsta, that sounds good to me. That's something that is not static."

In February, Curve return to the road to test their new theories and resume the hectic lifestyle that goes along with it as they cover the US, England and Europe. Certainly, the flames that the release of "Chinese Burn" has ignited will fan into a larger fire with the exposure from these shows. This time around, it looks good that Curve's success will be much more than just a drill.

(article nicked from 'Fix', 1997)