Round the bend from Crouch End stands a church. Curve are locked away somewhere inside, walled in by studio technology. The church is the converted headquarters of Anxious Records but, from the outside, on a bleak autumn night, it just looks like a run-down London chapel.

There are few clues to the fact that Dave Stewart, Anxious head, is lay rector of the building. Some battered flight cases stacked at the back may be relics from a Eurythmics tour. But, with the wind rattling the outside lantern, and shadows twisting and jiving, it is a deeply, and appropriately gothic place to be waiting for Curve.

For 30 minutes I am banging on the arched door and talking into a makeshift entry phone which won't talk back. 'Is there anybody there?...' Not for the first time, it occurs to me that Toni and Dean, those whipper-uppers of cold cauldron soundscapes, might be in league with something even more creepy than Annie Lennox's partner. Are Curve the Dave and Annie from Hell? It is time to go over their threshold. Invade their sanctuary. Play Devil's advocate. Are you a witch, Toni?

"What, a proper BLACK MAGIC WITCH? Or like someone just saying 'She's a witch, that one?' Ha ha ha ha!... Well, I'm reading that Aleister Cowly book. What's it called? I've been reading it for about a year now. The beast one... The Number Of The Beast. It's quite interesting, but it's nothing that I get into much."

So you're not out in the dead of night, pointing your dagger at the full moon?

"No, no, no. Not at all."

Ah, well. It was worth a stab.

TONI HALLIDAY is not a witch. Not even a right witch (that one). When I finally find the correct church door to bang on (some bastard gave me the wrong address) she is a resolutely down to earth woman, with a cut-the-crap attitude, a northern accent, fine features and a cool pair of black motorbike boots. In the pub round the corner, Toni and her easy-going partner, Dean, grab a swift half of lager, and chat straightforwardly.

Outwardly, they appear to be an entirely balanced, sane, working pop unit. But there are reasons to go looking for bats in their belfry.

In the course of a year, Curve have established themselves as devastating composers of vaulting, abstract, soundscape pop. The first EP 'Blindfold' was all things 'ic'. Manic, cabbalistic, psychotic and, erm, top music. The second EP 'Frozen' went Top 40 with it's ultra-violent Cocteaus noise. And now 'Cherry', the ravishing third EP (prelude to the 'Doppelgänger' album), which contains two songs of raging, seismic, Halloween keening - 'Clipped' and 'Die Like A Dog' - one burning kaleidoscope type thing, 'Galaxy', and the, well, celestial trickles of 'Cherry'.

Adjectively seductive it might be, but Curve music is conspicuously not good-time music. Whenever it's dance, it's equally seance. And this is where the devil has questions.

While Toni and Dean, with their long run-up to Curvaciousness (their over-discussed dodgy past careers) are clearly not to be comfortably bunched in with the alleged shoe-gazing types, they do share a predilection for describing fraught interior atmospheres. Curve songs are not social, or straightforwardly functional, and because they deal substantially with forms of introverted trauma, there is a weighty body of opinion which says CURVE ARE BAD FOR YOU. Well, are they?

Toni: "I don't think it's bad to deal with absolutely anything in pop. I think that any kind of pigeon-holing or censorship is completely crap. I mean, who f---in' said that, man? Who said pop is this? Who made that up?

"Pop is just a great way for people to communicate whatever they want. It's always been the same. You can go right back through the spectrum and say 'Is classical music valid?' I mean, classical music makes people cry! Is that negative? I don't think that people dealing with things that f--- them up is negative. I think it's really positive."

But just to be clear now, on the emotional spectrum is it safe to say that Curve are into the darker end of things?

Toni: "Yeah, well it definitely deals with the things that have affected us and that's how we choose to express how we feel. I feel angry towards people. I feel hate. And I never thought I would be able to because I thought hate was far too used, far too bandied about. But there actually people now who, at 27, I've come across and hate. And they've done things to me. I mean it sounds really crap, all that 'I was brought up in a f---in' shoebox' stuff, but you can't get away from it. And I have no intention of not venting my anger! Ha ha ha ha!"

I can't go back and pinpoint what made me want to write 'Die Like A Dog' or 'Clipped'. But there would have been triggers. It could be anything. Something like going out and buying a pint of milk and someone's a complete and utter asshole to you."

Nothing deeper?

"Well, I mean we could go deeper. You could say that 'Die Like A Dog' was because my father beat me as a child. You know, but I don't really know why people do things. I wish I did."

What do you hope that people get out of Curve?

Dean: "I just hope that they can dance and move around and get some kind of gut feeling from it that they can't quite understand. And something sexy, I hope."

Toni: "It has to be sexy. It has to be groin music. I think we're really sexy. All the rhythms are like WAAAARGH! YEAH! OK! And lyrically I hope that it plays with people's minds."

IT IS, of course, in Curve's best interests to be a little hazy about where all the venom and punk aggro and emotional deep-freezing comes from. I mean, it could just be that they like the style - 'Ooh, look, paranoid rhymes with endless void, darling. How's my hair?' - but I don't think so. Listening to Toni and Dean talk about the "frantic" way they work together, their intolerance of "studio perfectionism", and their f--- you, this is for me attitude, it's pretty clear that their frustrating years as solo artiste, session musician and half of a crap Techno-funk band are a major reason for the fierceness of Curve.

So it's ironic that the other slur on Curve is that their showbiz-ish past renders their angry-indie present somehow inauthentic. Mates of Dave Stewart's, and ex-major label pop pets couldn't be for real could they?

A test question: What do you hate most about the music biz?

Toni: "The suits!"

Correct answer.

"In fact we hate them so much we don't deal with them."

Steady on.

"We won't speak to those people. We won't have that grin and bear it shit. Life's too short to be f---in' bothered with some asshole in a suit who doesn't know what they're on about. In my whole time as a recording artist I have met three people who can use their ears at all. And I have met a lot of A&R people and a lot of people in the so-called music industry, and you could put them all together and make two pounds of salt of them. It never has anything to do with raw talent and that's wrong."

So how showbiz are Curve?

"Well I think, finally, Curve as in Dean Garcia and Toni Halliday have got to the point where we don't have to be like that. We did it before and it f---in' did our minds in. The most f---ed up period of our life. But we've finally hit it. We don't have to deal with all that any more."

In the blink of an eye, Curve will be so far round the bend of success that Curve-history will not matter anymore. 'Frozen' has just been released in the US and is 'doing very well'. The debut album is near completion. The fact that Toni and Dean are getting there against an array of 'genuine music lover' prejudices should make it all the sweeter. Not only are Curve winning with a music that is unfashionably messed-up, but they are doing so without having to present themselves as bumbling wrecks.

They are flagrantly flouting the unwritten law of pop which says if you're going to make music of turbulence and scarring, then you'd better be a walking disaster. In the case of Toni Halliday it means that, for Curve-works to be believable, she ought to be visibly f---ed up from her often alluded to 'difficult childhood'.

Her itinerant father left when she was eight, and her upbringing in Sunderland with a hard-drinking mother was apparently no easy ride. Yet Halliday, reared on Siouxsie and Lennox as role models, is nobody's mess. Forceful and analytical, she only talks about her 'bloody mental problems' after coaxing.

Do you think that because you haven't seen your father for that time, you might be seeking a sort of substitute approval through Curve?

"What?... 'I luv Ya, Toni'... Ha ha ha! I don't know. I don't think it's permeated my relationships. Dean has seen me go through a few and I've never looked for father figures! So it's hard to tell whether the fact that I haven't seen my father since I was eight is going to push me on to seek approval en-masse. But I agree that it probably has something to do with it. I know that I probably should go and see a psychiatrist and find out all this stuff. But I thought I'd just leave it until it crops up in it's own little way."

IN TIMES of creeping functionalism in pop, when if it's not for spreading love around the dancefloor, or singing along to in a rock stadium, it isn't there, Curve are making some of the most psychologically complex music around, and making it work on the High Street.

Even if their 'flaming kaleidoscopes of sound' are not your brew, there's little question that Toni Halliday, as an addition to pop's lineage of sharp, sexy, shit-kicking women, is damn near priceless. That's no witch, man. That's a pop arc angel.

Name me a character in a book or a film that you particularly empathise with, Toni.

"Well... There's bits about Frances Farmer, the actress. She was completely controlled in the end by her mother, who was completely insane. She was actually a girl with an opinion, but she was born in the wrong time. Her mother wanted her to become a Hollywood starlet, but she didn't want to do it, and because she was a bit wild, her mother had her committed, where she was promptly raped and abused by wardens. They gave her a lobotomy, with the ice pick technique. They put it in the corner of your eye and just go DONK! You just can't believe it... And some of the things she said and the things she thought were similar to things that I can remember feeling.

"It's the fact that she was basically normal, but at the time she was unacceptable. It's like it's still not acceptable for a woman to say 'c---'. You know what I mean? Sometimes in my life I've been so frustrated. Like you're hitting your head against a brick wall all the time to get it through to people that you don't have to be a dumbo."

So being opinionated and strong and determined and a woman has been a problem for you?

"Well, there you go... I'm a witch! You know what I'm saying. I've done interviews where people have said to me 'Isn't that rather a manly opinion to have?' And it's like 'What are you on about you f---wit?' Women have come a long way! Don't f---in' push me back in the dark ages! If you wanna stay there, so ahead!"

Now Toni, that sounds a bit aggressive...

"Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I'll go back to my cave. Ha ha ha ha! But, it has to be dealt with. It has to be changed. And if people want to say you're a total nightmare and you're a f---in' witch, then fine. Maybe it's because I haven't got a dick. I don't know... I'm sure it would be fine if I did. Ha ha ha!"

(article nicked from 'New Musical Express', 9 November 1991)