"Oh, I had a horrible dream last night." Toni Halliday drops her petite frame into an overstuffed chair and reaches for the first in a chain of cigarettes.

"There are these two women in this house," she continues. "One of them was married to a man and decided to kill him. All the way through the dream, the wife was on a tightrope. She was trying to go to sleep, but she knew things about her husband she shouldn't, things she had no business knowing. She and the other woman were old, in their 70s and had been friends forever. They finally killed the husband. It was a really hairy dream. Those things come through my music subconsciously. I think we acquire a lot of information through our subconscious."

When Curve's Blindfold EP was released In March of 1991 it seemed to be borne full blown from the subconscious of Halliday and partner Dean Garcia. Ghostly sonics were only enhanced in live performance, with Curve wrestling their swirling, layered, sampled, fractured music from plastic into a looming, living animal rife with subtlety that caught audiences up in the duo's singular vision. With Halliday's beautiful frozen vocals circling throughout the music, Garcia guided the band through a kind of collective, pulsing dream state.

Three EPs (Frozen, Cherry, Faît Accompli), a debut LP (Doppelgänger), a collection (Pubic Fruit) and a new LP later, Curve are still brandishing a sound that gets them labelled as the cover girl and boy of goth. But as with other artists who look inward to perfect an idea, Curve view styles and labels as shells to be used and tossed away.

Their new one, Cuckoo (Virgin), with producer Flood and mixer Alan Moulder still onboard, further defines the idea. But the melodies and rhythms are clearer, as are the voices. From the John Bonham-meets-'60s art-rock feel of the title track to the uptempo, gruelling kickass pump of "Missing Link," Curve continue to dig into a well of dreams.

Wearing dark sunglasses as bright morning light pours through a window, the demure Halliday lights another cigarette. A tattoo of the treble clef and a musical staff peek out from beneath a short sleeve. Like a cross between a Soho artist and a stunning supermodel, Halliday has both brains and looks, and an outspoken tongue to go with it. Slightly guarded yet quick to smile, she reveals her thoughts slowly.

"I don't think one thing we do is intentional," she says, pondering Curve's logic. "We don't know why we're doing it. I never know why I write or where it comes from. Ever. I don't take it too seriously, otherwise you actually start to think you're a good writer. You think, 'I've got to take it further 'cause it's my art,' and you begin to believe that instead of it coming out and surprising you.

"I take my role as a human being and as a member of the human race more seriously than any role I may have as an artist."

Prior to Halliday's meeting up with Dean Garcia by way of Dave Stewart (Dean toured with the Eurythmics, while Halliday cut a solo album, Hearts and Handshakes, on Stewart's Anxious Records, also Curve's UK label), she got her start in music at the age of 16 with the Uncles. A line in Cuckoo's title track reveals a lot about both her determination and her introversion: "I understand when your patience deserts you/I think I've loved but I'm not so sure/Can someone tell me what I'm here for/I was never just an ordinary girl."

"That song's about me," Halliday says, now 28. "I never worked. Never did anything but play music. Ever. I'd rather be completely lazy and shut myself off for weeks and months on end than do any other thing. I'd rather starve. In fact, I have many times. I have done it. I always believed, all the time. It came down to imagination and motivation. I was never meant to work the checkout even though I was told at school that's what I was going to do. Nobody has to do that. It's only their personality and limitations that make them settle. If you don't take risks you don't get anything."

Dreams of an unsure past and a ponderous future are what the listener hears and identifies with in Curve. Theirs is the waking revelation of Garcia's ethereal soundtracks given life by Halliday's method of lyric writing - a coupling of instant inspiration with mental doodling. Though scribbled notes fall from her purse (which she lost twice while here in New York), often the words will tumble out of her as she hears Dean's music for the first time.

"'Superblaster' came off the top of my head one morning," she says. "That's what the song told me to sing. It just came out of my mouth. Dean asked, 'What the hell's a Superblaster?'

"We're only prepared to go our own path. We're not interested in doing what anyone else does or what's current or pandering to the marketplace. 'Superblaster' means don't play around with us or you might get burned. This is kind of a bombastic statement, but we're the masters. With time this will all be evident. People wonder why our records are so big and enormous. It's just us being really elegant," she laughs.

Cuckoo is also about '60s acid devotee and author Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a humorous but tragic tale about patients in a mental hospital.

"We're always after a name that means more than one thing," she says. "In England, when you call your grandmother a bit insane you call her 'cuckoo,' which is nicer than calling her a fucking nutter. And the bird is really vicious. That's a reflection of the record as well."

Halliday's life has changed immensely from her childhood days spent cruising the Mediterranean to touring the world with Curve. In many ways she's still living inside that little girl's head. She began the wandering life when her father sold a profitable business to buy a yacht in hopes of chartering cruises for rich Europeans, which initially sounds like a good idea.

"But all the rich people have their own yachts," she fires back. "It's a crap idea. We basically starved. We'd go for days and days without eating a thing. Finally, my dad, who had a marvellous gift for the gab, brilliant at communicating with people, he would get some tourist drunk in a bar, then head back to his yacht and steal the telly and the video. Wooosh! We were gone. Straight to the next port, sell it to buy some food. Then move again. Mom and I didn't know what was happening. We were always leaving ports in a hurry. I learned to isolate myself and live in my head. I still do that."

Halliday is still a pirate, her intercontinental rovings gracing us with her inherited gift of gab. Curve are still defining themselves, free of the need to label everything for mass consumption.

"We were very aware that we didn't want to do anything like Doppelgänger," she concludes. "But we have this sound. When Dean plays the bass and I sing, it sounds like Curve. It's undefined at the moment because people try to classify us with other sounds but it doesn't fit with anything. It just sounds like Curve. We're very careful about reaching for the next plateau."

(article nicked from 'Alternative Press', February 1994)