Curses is a one man outfit based in Berlin, an 80s obsessive with a chilly New Wave/ post- punk sound, all urgency and paranoia, some Cold War dread along with some tough beats beamed in from Belgian New Beat or early acid house. A few years ago his cover version of The The's This Is The Day pricked my ears up, powered by a Hooky- esque bassline that you could dredge a canal with, some bleepy toplines and a vocal that always seems to me like he slightly misses his cue for the first line but makes it work anyway.
Last year Curses released a song on Dischi Autunno with vocals from Cici, a sparse, rhythmic, iced tribute to Italian actress and photojournalist Gina Lollobrigada.
Gina was a high profile international star in the 1950s and 60s and has lived quite the life and aged 94 is still with us, the last of the superstars of the silver screen. She starred alongside Humphrey Bogart in Beat The Devil and Crossed Swords with Errol Flynn as well as films with Yul Brynner, Ernst Borgnine, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.
Curses has a new album out this month, Incarnadine, more pumped up dark disco and post- punk that sound like they've been mainlined straight from a Berlin of the 1920s/ 1980s transplanted into now. You can buy it here. If you dig around his Bandcamp site you'll also find a thirty eight track compilation album called Next Wave Acid Punx that explains everything, from Gina X to Yello and all points in between.
