Another week, another comeback. But the return, as Headcase, of Dean Garcia - Uncle Fester to Toni Halliday's Morticia in the excrutiating techno-goth that was Curve - will be heralded only by those still hanging on to a belief that heavy rock atmospherics and machine beats can be wedded without embarrassment. Sadly, 'Mushiness' is here to prove them wrong.

Taking Curve's one-time patronage by dance music's hardcore mavericks to heart, Garcia has deluded himself into believing he can join their ranks. 'OK Washing Machine' is all disembodied howling and epileptic beats in the style of Aphex Twin's 'Come To Daddy', while on '59.58' Garcia does a passable impersonation of DJ Shadow. Meanwhile, 'Fiction' sounds like, y'know, Massive Attack an' that. Oh look, the crickets on.

On 'Going Round', Garcia - proving the goth gene is hereditary - gets his nine-year-old daughter to wail malevolently over waves of treated guitar. If by a man's collaborator's shall ye know him, then Garcia - buddies with Tim 'Bomb The Bass' Simenon and JC001, and still keeping Halliday on the pay roll - is very much lost in the past. Twelve months in the making and three years too late, 'Mushiness' exists for anyone who found 'Mezzanine' too chirpy.

5 (out of 10)

review by Christian Ward (nicked from 'New Musical Express', dated 14 August 1999)