Described, variously, as dusky and mysterious, cosmetic and up-for-it, Industrial techno disco, and like a Japanese express train, Curves second album Cuckoo is more sophisticated, more seductive, less serrated, even squelchy in places than their debut, Doppelganger. A mature, fluent, and literary album, it hit the Top 30 on release in 1993. Cuckoo takes the listener from the established hallmarks and runs with them - over the horizon - to many new and rich areas of pop melodrama. Delicate and gorgeous moments sit easily with their simultaneously cool and incendiary sound. A more personal album, it is nonetheless metallic, unforgiving, LOUD, clear. As with Doppelganger the album was produced by the band with Flood and Steve Osborne, and it was mixed by Alan Moulder. It is home to the lead tracks from singles Blackerthreetracker EP and Superblaster and is regarded by the band as their best piece of work. This expanded 2CD edition includes the album plus the remixes and two previously unreleased tracks, the original versions of Rising and Half The Time, which have only previously been available in their remixed form. Compiled by Dean Garcia and Toni Halliday.
A**R
Super Blaster
One of the best albums of the 1990s (up there with Violator), this has had a fairly subtle remastering which is only really evident in the fractionally longer running times of some tracks - but the original mix was fine, and a few extra seconds here and there don't hurt. For many the big bonus will be a full extra CD of b-sides and remixes which only obsessives would have collected... OK, I'm one of them, but it's still handy to have them all in one place. Get it while you can.
A**R
Love it! Great fast delivery too
Love it!Great fast delivery too
J**A
What a waste
To reissue an album like this in 2017 without remastering it is a pure waste of time and money.
S**H
Amazing album, reissue looks a bit weak compared to the amazing Doppelganger release
The Cuckoo remaster gets a much less generous set of extra tracks than Doppelganger, and the remastering is more like a clean up and polish than a transformative rework - in particular the album is still mastered very quiet compared to most modern releases (and compared to the remasters on The Way Of Curve), so a back to back comparison doesn't have the "wow" factor that you get with a lot of remasters that are just twice as loud as the original and compressed into the wall. Given that Curve's whole thing is "immersive wall of sound" it's actually exactly the sort of music where you'd expect brick wall compression ... but apparently Dean (or whoever did the remaster) didn't feel like conforming. The solution is pretty simple... turn the volume UP!Unlike Doppelganger, which was packed to the brim with extras (including the entire Pubic Fruit collection on disc 2), disc 1 is just the album and disc 2 contains the single mixes and B-Sides from Missing Link and Superblaster, plus the previously unreleased original mixes of Rising and Half The Time. It looks rather spartan compared to Doppelganger but that's probably says more about what a good deal Doppelganger is than Cuckoo being a let down. I would really have liked to get Pink Girl With The Blues on there too, though!Anyway, the remaster isn't night and day and the extra tracks don't include much fans won't have heard before ... but it's still one of the best noisy/groovy albums ever recorded, so go ahead and buy it anyway!
Trustpilot
3 weeks ago
5 days ago
