New Music: Curxes - In Your Neighbourhood (Video)

If you’re a fan of underground electronic pop music you might remember the south coast two-piece that then became a three-piece known as Curxes. The band featured numerous times on Breaking More Waves, as they released a series of often loud, clanking and industrial sounding songs between 2011 and 2015 with one full length and one mini album, before announcing their parting of ways. At the time lead singer Roberta Fidora made it clear that this wasn’t the end of Curxes, but merely time for pause, reconfiguration and reflection – an artist’s equivalent of a university gap year or two. During that quiet interval the name Curxes did crop up once more on this blog when I wrote about how I’d become friends with Roberta and why we went all the way to Estonia together for a cocktail (here).

Now the pause button has been released, with Curxes relocated to the Isle of Wight (joining an ever-impressive list of acts from the garden isle that includes Champs, Lauran Hibberd, Nakamarra and Plastic Mermaids) and the musical journey recommences again; but this time Roberta is travelling more or less solo.

Having teased the release of a new album Gilded Cage a month or so ago with a rather creepy trailer video and an instrumental that sat somewhere between The Exorcist and Stranger Things soundtracks (click here to view), now the first song proper has been released. It’s called In Your Neighbourhood.

‘Bleak and oblique choral post-pop songs’ is how Roberta has described the new material – which is an accurate description. In Your Neighbourhood is far gentler and less incensed sounding than much of Curxes’ past material, straddling the boundaries between experimentation and pop, with Roberta’s soft downbeat vocal being gorgeously soothing and haunting. I once described Curxes as being the sound of two robots f*cking. If that was the case then In Your Neighbourhood is very much the sound of something far more human and post-coital. There are gentle pulses, the aforementioned drifting choral backing, a neat chord change and some catchy little electronic riffs that make the return of Curxes a very welcome one. 

The song was co written with Andrew Wright, formerly of indie-art / post rock band The Strange Death Of Liberal England. 

Watch the video, which features a bunch of retro televisions and a puppet band below. 

Curxes will be supporting Blancmange on a number of their forthcoming UK shows. In Your Neighbourhood will be available on other formats besides You Tube from 6th October.

Curxes - In Your Neighbourhood (Video)