Curve "Chinese Burn": Curve released their last LP "Cuckoo" years ago, and then there was nothing from them for ages, then one little glimmer of hope in the "Pink Girl With The Blues" single, then nothing again for ages, dammit, and finally this. Toni Hal liday has an amazing voice and thankfully they havent distorted it too much on the opener [Steve Osborne Mix of Chinese Burn, which I think is used in the video for the single]. It's pure Curve stuff, mangled loud guitars mixed with dangerous techno beats , with Toni singing very scary shit through it all. Curve have always been willing to fuck around with the boring indie sound in their tracks and the extra production puts them ahead of the crap they're usually lumped in with. Even around the time of stuff like Fait Accompli or the Frozen EP they were still making far bette r tunes than any of their pigeonhole counterparts like Ride or Swervedriver. The Paul Van Dyk Mix is ok, starts off with jus' plain ol' techno beats, but then the melody from the first track comes in and it almost ends up sounding like a bouncy Goa Trance number. The Lunatic Calm remix belongs on the Meal Time Compilation (reviewed elsewhere), clanging fucked up d'n'b beats, actually quite similar in sound to the Wafta track on th at LP. The Witchman remix is similar to Steve Osborne's, just exaggerated more. The Headcase medipac Mix is the best of the lot, it starts off for about two minutes with a very quiet ambient melody floating in the background, and Toni singing almost acapella over the top of it, then these breakbeats appear from nowhere and whip you out of your trance. Excellent. Toni's voice is again very distorted and digitalised bu t it works well. The 6th track on the EP is a new one, "Robbing Charity", sounds sort of like something you might hear at a progessive house night, with heavy 4/4 beats, high hat build ups and kickdrums, (nice one!) Toni's singing again top form. As for the last track, "Come Clean", well.. very disappointing closer. Sounds like something you'd pick up on the end of a badly copied 1980's punk tape. Oh well, you cant have everything I guess. Overall then qu ite interesting, hopefully the new LP (out soon?) will be in a similar vein, although maybe not considering this EP is mostly remixes.. anyway, you get 7 tracks for a fiver, so you cant complain really...