Somewhere around a million years ago (OK, 20-ish) a most excellent friend of mine forever known only as Big Sushi almost literally assaulted me with Curve’s classic Doppelganger. It’s a masterpiece of shoegaze dance, ethereal vocals over spinning and sprawling guitars with a driving half-synthesized beat behind it (and a sparkling production courtesy of Flood). Easily a top-ten British album of the 90s (and yes, I know what else came out in the 90s).
Curve were centered around two people: Toni Halliday, chanteuse extraordinaire; and Dean Garcia, guitar virtuoso, songsmith, and programming genius. They had a long and prolific career, moving from shoegaze into harder electronic sounds and finally some more atmospheric and ambient stuff before calling it quits around 2004. I was quite sad to see them go.
Well, Dean Garcia is back, and calling his new outfit SPC ECO.
SPC ECO (it’s pronounced “space echo”) are very clearly Garcia doing what he knows best. His new ethereal vocalist is Rose Berlin, and Joey Levenson joins as a second guitarist, but it’s still Garcia doing all the programming and it would seem most of the writing.
3D, their first full-length, could readily be mistaken for a new Curve record (or a lost record from the early 90s. “You’re Alright” could be a remix from Doppelganger)- and that’s not a bad thing. Berlin’s pretty vocals are a fair approximation of the softer side of Halliday; Garcia’s guitar tones are as sprawling and electrifying as ever; the drum sounds are crisp and penetrating. As a sound record, 3D really nails a great ambiance. It’s as dark and sexy as you’d expect, round where it should be round and shimmery where you want it to sparkle.
The problem with a sound record, of course, is that it can get difficult to separate the songs from each other. 3D keeps a tempo of about 100 BPM straight through; the vocals are slightly softer than the guitars, so it can be very difficult to make out what Berlin is saying over the gentle wash of distortion and reverb. The drum sounds don’t vary much, and the time signatures never slide off of a straight 4. Overall, it’s a hypnotizing combination (and that could be a bad thing).
The best parts of the record are when you can tell it’s a different song. ”Another Day”, for example, switches up its guitar tones to an angular buzzing while the percussion gets a little more fierce; overall it sounds a bit like NIN’s “Reptile” being crammed through the shoegaze filter. ”Special” gets a trip-hop feel, mixing a Portishead-y piano hook into its slight shuffle and blending in some great head-nod pauses. The only other major deviation is “Something Anything”, which has a big, echo-y drum sound reminiscent of 80s Tears for Fears.
As a whole, 3D is an amazing slice of background. You could throw it on, start a project, and never notice that you’re falling in love with SPC ECO the whole time. It’s a tough active listen, though, with only a couple of gems lifting out of its hypnotic sameness. I’m hoping that their newer records show more of the band developing and less of Dean Garcia reliving his past; however, that past is great and still sounds mighty good.
Final Grade: A for sound, B- for homogenization. Get the whole record if you finally need a break from Roseland as background music, otherwise download “Another Day” and “Special”.
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