Unit Circle Rekkids: Bethany Curve

Reviews

[All Music Guide] [Bizarre] [Carpe Noctem] [C & D Services] [Chart] [Crohinga Well] [Dark Velvet] [Dead Angel] [Digital Artifact] [Evil Sponge] [Gajoob Magazine] [Good Times] [Improvijazzation Nation] [Losing Today] [Magnet] [Neo Gothic] [Outburn] [The Ptolemic Terrascope] [Sonic Boom] [The Stranger] [Throttle] [Voltage]

Evil Sponge

It should serve as no surprise to regular readers of this site that i spend way too much time obsessing over music. It's what i do. When i discovered Listen.com i spent to much time wandering around that site. For the uninitiated, Listen.com offers links to downloadable MP3's. What's great is that you can search for a band, or you can search for things that the editors of Listen.com think sound like a particular band.

I played with that "similar artists" box a lot. I read about, downloaded, and listened to every band that the editors said is "similar" to Cocteau Twins (who are my main musical obsession).

Bethany Curve is one of the bands i discovered in this way. I downloaded and enjoyed several songs from their MP3.com page. It took me quite some time to track down this album by the band, but it has certainly been worth it.

Bethany Curve are another one of those bands that are still making melancholy and dreamy New Wave pop. They lean towards the Lowlife and Joy Division side of the spectrum, that is, more deep riffs and lots of distortion. This is fine by me.

Their sound involves layer upon layer of distorted guitar (there are three guitarists in the band), thunderous tom heavy drumming, and deeper male vocals buried in the general mix. The guitars swirl around each other and the vocal melodies, while the drumming provides a good solid anchor to prevent everything from totally drifting away into the ether. Now, a band with such a sound could be light and fluffy -- airy almost. Not so Bethany Curve -- their layers are dense, and the speed of guitar delay and chorus, the heavy drumming, and their use of minor chords put a slightly darker spin on things. This is not light music for sunny afternoons frolicking in the woods, but rather it is music for a high speed drive through a rainy post-industrial wasteland.

Consider the first half of the album. Things start off with Drag, a great intro tune. It is based on a tense bass drone that builds nicely to an explosion of drums, cymbals, and fuzzed-out guitars. The drumming seems nervous. The tension fades into Temporary, in which deep vocals are layered over guitars that echo like rain on the roof of your car. This builds into a nice fast guitar drone with good drumming. The song reminds me of early Echo And The Bunnymen. Next Bethany Curve have a short ambient interlude of keyboard washes called Carnyval Sweet, which transforms into Fold In The Floor. This song is a wacky spaced out waltz from a darker time that ends with the voice almost screaming over some really eerie distortion.

This is a really nice sweep of music that builds tension from the first note and then releases it through the frenetic energy of Fold In The Floor. The rest of the album is a similar ebb and flow of tension and release. But release never brings joy, because the tension will be back.... It all makes for a tense album, slightly unnerving, but not too much. (I think that this implies a good use of minor chord changes.)

There is one other song that i specifically want to mention, and that is Pool And The Shine. This song has guitars that float and chime like something off of Victorialand. This is a beautiful tune, and it is the album's standout track. A moment of true relaxation and peacefulness in the tense world of Bethany Curve.

I also should provide some warning about the albums weakest track. It's not even that weak: it is a typical good rollicking five minute Bethany Curve guitar number sandwiched in-between 6 minute stretches of guitar feedback. They call it Marasmus and it is the seventeen minute album closer. It's a good song, but it seems a little self-indulgant. And of course, the long stretches of feedback would really annoy some people.

But it's only a little bit of annoyance at the end of an otherwise lovely album. If you are a fan of melancholy new wave guitar rock, then track this disc down. - PostLibyan

All Music Guide

Bethany Curve's third album, Gold, finds the band building on their considerable strengths. While the fivesome still remain squarely in the post-shoegazer camp, their abilities seem only to grow stronger with time. "Drag," the album's monstrous opener, is their best number yet. With its yearning, commanding vocals, explosive build-and-release atmospherics, and deeply echoed guitar drones and wails, the song achieves a pure, powerful beauty rivaling the very best of Slowdive or even My Bloody Valentine. If nothing else on the album quite reaches the Elysian heights of "Drag," the band still come awfully close more than once: "Fold in the Floor" has more huge, majestic guitar squalls; "Over and Out" balances a thrashy main hook and forceful drums with blissed-out feedback; and "Strength" begins with various strange crumbling noises before a series of lovely guitar washes float up through the mix and take over. Meanwhile, the album closes on a killer note with "Marasmus," a long jam with sharp drumming, droning vocal chants, and a palpable sense of massed psychedelic power. — Ned Raggett

Dark Velvet - Issue #3

This group would have been at home on the early 4AD label. On one hand, this is jangly guitar pop with male vocals (much like Modern English), but on the other hand, the layered guitars and lush arrangements create an atmosphere that's more like the Cocteau Twins. But with three guitarists, you can't avoid that layered sound and it's this sound that distinguishes them from other atmoshperic bands...almost like what the Felt and The Jesus and Mary Chain (shoegazers) did back in the 80s. These guys will be everywhere soon...keep an eye on them.

Losing Today - Issue #2

There is something nocturnal and sad about this album by the Bethany Curve. Their music is light and elegant, composed of romantic ballads of a linear structure, with drums and guitars right up in the foreground, often used in very low tones. The result is vaguely "coldwave" rhythmic music with a highly emotional impact, in which vocals accompany the slow progression of the sounds in a swaying that oscillates between dreamy, slow-motion passages and disenchanted awakenings, rocking and supporting the harmony, without ever becoming too involved. Percussion and guitar bases are tempered into enveloping cadences by the dreamy progression of the music; it does quicken up in places, though always captivating and never noisy, immersed in a feeling of floaty abandon making any nasty residue of aggression fade away. Slow adagios overlap into sudden accelerations, and the sad, introspective background mood make all of the tracks sound painful, solemn and subline, like in "Strength" and "Movement". Two of the best tracks are: "Temporary", evocative and slightly Gothic, and "Pool and the Shine", a deeply inebriating lullaby filled with intensity. Although the general atmosphere of the whole cd is pretty much like this, there are also a few tracks (mostly instrumental) with a subtle, minimal atmosphere, created through the use of a variety of devices to give every composition a character of its own: distored guitars, modified voices, lunar, ethereal harmonies, and intruguing beds of sound, such as in the fascinating "Carnyval Sweet" or the very long, obsessive "Marasmus". Pleasant, sober pop in which the woven fabric of rhythms blends in with reflective, intimate melodies, just the right kind of music for those long, sad, sought-after dreams.

The Stranger - 4/9/98

This Santa Cruz space rock quartet drift more to the dreamy side of Spiritualized or Spaceman 3. Guitarists Richard Millang and Ray Lake generate luscious layers of noise over Chris Preston's bass lines and minimalist vocals. At times their sophomore CD rocks with a pop groove, especially on "Drag" and "Temporary" where David Mac Wha's drums kick in, but then the album subsides into its familiar laconic drone. Unlike its space rock predecessors, Bethany Curve's organic sound inspires introspective journeys rather than trippy cosmic voyages - a somnolent soundtrack for self-discovery. - David Slatton

Improvijazzation Nation

Bethany Curve: GOLD - So, th' CD comes in a cover that's SILVER, right? You betchum! Pay no attention to th' packaging, tho', dearies - this MUSIC is what counts! Using ONLY guitars (one track, "Carnyval Sweet", has piano), drums and vox, these four fellows have put together (yet) another MASTERpiece! Even a long-term listener might suspect some synth-magick - but it's just not THERE! Which makes this orchestral sounding excursion into inner space all the more amazing. Everything is totally in BALANCE - combine all your favorite elements of psychedelia, old "Moody Blues" and space rock opera & add a dash of '90's total energy & you'll come close to imagining what this is like! We were fortunate enough to catch their first CD (Skies A Crossed Sky), but this grand effort takes "Curve" up another notch or two in our view! It's (really) hard to believe what heights this music might take you to. Intricate, pleasant and full of mystery at the same time, they weave a musical web that will be hard for you to break away from. This CD gets our "PICK" of this issue for BEST! Most highly recommended! - Rotcod Zzaj

Voltage - Issue #6

Although this Santa Cruz quartet descends directly from the acid rock tradition of Spacemen 3 and Skullflower with their guitar-generated layers of lush noise, Bethany Curve's aesthetic feels closer to the complex cacophony of Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins, Lush). The gorgeous and emotionally-draining "Pool and the Shine" actually sounds like it would be right at home on the Cocteau's New Age album, Victorialand. Bethany Curve continue to use effects pedals and processors to coax unearthly sounds from their guitars, and they still reject keyboards or synths. Unlike their space rock predecessors, Bethany Curve's gorgeous slabs of sound don't inspire trippy cosmic voyages as much as introspective journeys - they provide the somnolent soundtrack for self-discovery. But melancholy is by no means Bethany Curve's only emotion, and the band proves it can still rock out on "Drag." The opening track sets the stage for a varied and complex album with a slow, contemplative movement sandwiched between driving bass lines and David MacWha's rock drums. Gold succeeds in many ways that their previous album Skies A Crossed Sky failed, most notably in the way the band compensates for Richard Millang's nasal monotone. Guitarists Chris Preston and Ray Lake lend a hand on vocals, most notably on "Temporary," but they fare no better. Echo effects and vocal filters along with minimalist lyrics go a long way to disguising the band's only remaining weakness. A masterful and brilliant album. - Da5id

Dead Angel - Issue #32

These spaced-out jokers have a peculiar sense of humor: The name of the disc is GOLD, so what color do they use for the unadorned cover and tray sleeve? Uh, silver.... The name and the disc art are opaque enough that you can't tell what they do -- which, as it turns out, is guitar-heavy semi- space rock with an orchestral bent. Most of the time their sound falls somewhere between DISINTEGRATON-era Cure and LOVELESS-era My Bloody Valentine, only with a bigger fondness for weird sounds than the former and a more consistent sense of structure than the latter. Given their penchant for burying vocals in the background and the presence of three guitarists, i wouldn't be surprised to find them influenced by the Band of Susans. (In fact, after hearing the sawtooth guitar squee in the background of "Over and Out," i'm even more convinced they are hep to the godlike vibrations o' Robert Poss and his uberfuzzed guitars.)

The album is pretty evenly divided between tracks that are actual songs ("Drag," "Temporary," "Fold in the Floor," "Fourteen"), pure exercises in atmosphere and strange effects ("Carnyval Sweet," Pool and the Shine," "Strength," "Marasmus"), and others that fall somewhere in between. "Drag," the opener, pretty conclusively demonstrates why they can't be dismissed as a mere shoegazer band -- even though it's spilling over with thick, distorted dream-o-tron guitars and guazy vox, periodically the drums thunder in with such force that they almost drown out the guitars (but not quite). They have a nice sense of dynamics, obviously, evidenced in "Fold in the Floor," where a chiming guitar line is gradually joined by other, dreamier (and fuzzier) guitars, then ethereal vox, and finally the drums, all in their own due time. One particularly outstanding track is "Fourteen," whose thunderous start-and-stop drums and eternally spiraling guitars make it sound like the Cure covering the Cocteau Twins as produced by My Bloody Valentine.

The effects permeating the album are interesting in their own right, from the slo-mo rotating wind-tunnel feel of "Carnyval Sweet" to the crunchy noises of "Strength" that are eventually nearly drowned out by droning hoverbot guitars. Then there's "Cygnus X-1," whose spaced-out interstellar whirls and bleeps live up to the starbound title. "Movement," especially in the introduction, makes inventive use of decaying delay lines before the song's full weight kicks in. The album ends with the twisting drone and squeal of "Marasmus," one of the most abstract pieces on the album -- at least until the drums and avalanche of guitars roar in, at which point it is transformed into a big, gloriously messy blur of sound. Yowsa. In the Land of the Burning Steer Skulls, we call this swank.

Chart Magazine - June '98

It's with great fanfare and thoroughly posed melancholy that I can officially announce to the world today, shoe-gazer is back. Sure, releases by the likes of Curve, Swervedriver and Jesus And Mary Chain show the vets are still relevant, but it's newbies like Bethany Curve who are once again making it acceptable to wear black in non-goth utility and listen to records in your bedroom with the lights off. Possessing the requisite swirlability without the overboard 72-track guitar, the three-guitar buckshot on Gold makes for a stunning listen. It's all good, but "Fourteen" is one track you can put particularly high on your gloom-o-meter. - ABr

Magnet Magazine - July/August '98

Bethany Curve takes you back to an '80s adolescence of hanging out in dark bedrooms, playing second hand Joy Division, Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees records and acting pissed off at the world. The quartet's second release is a dark, bass/guitar/drums attack that has a profound gothic undercurrent to its shoegazing atmospheres. It's accomplished stuff that sounds increasingly more retro as the millennium approaches and all the old kiddy goths have long since become ravers. Gold fluctuates between swirling, minor-key indie-goth workouts and noise pieces like "Cygnus X-1." "Movement has Seventeen Seconds-ish guitars and Psychedelic Furs-like vocals. It's all very moody, space and enjoyable, but it does little to help push forward post-punk music's evolution. - Stacy Osbaum

Sonic Boom - May/June '98

Bethany Curve returns with their unique guitar centric sound that amazingly emulates the tones and scales of a synthesizer. Although it doesn't sound like it, every single note on this album was written either on a drum kit or a guitar. Yet you would never know it from some of the Ambient harmony and deep drones. This four piece band from Santa Cruz are masterminds of guitar distortion. Whether they use pedals, delays, or flanges, they perform miracles with the six stringed demons of rock and alter them to sound like angelic keyboards. As a result this album is very mellow on the tracks where the drums are used infrequently. The mood almost borders on a catatonic, thereby confusing the band with a depressing Gothic act, which they definitely don't deserve to be compared, no matter how bleak their music can get at times.

Digital Artifact - Issue #8

Now for something different. Though not entirely electronic, Bethany Curve combine and execute guitar lines in a fashion that deserves recognition. The guitars, which are the basis for most of the tracks, create a massive atmosphere for noise interpretation and realization, back by vocals. Bethany Curve are the next logical step if shoe-gaze pop evolved further than Ride, My Bloody Valentine, or even Spiritualized. Like a trance symphony of live instrumentation, Bethany Curve create the dream through tracks like 'Temporary', 'Carnyval Sweet', 'Fourteen', 'Fold in the Floor' and my fave 'Strength'. Bethany Curve are to be explored and acquired by those who maintain a passion for ambient noise, as well as those lost dream poppers whose direction was lost when Ride died and Oasis rose to fame. Nuff said! - Alkemist

Throttle - Issue #135

This Santa Cruz quartet bucks that groovy college town's hippy trend and puts out a... shoegazing album! Haunted by the ghost of Ride with a touch of the Cure's dark ambience thrown in for good measure, Bethany Curve has produced a fairly exciting (in its own subdued way) album that crackles with a subterranean electricity. Controlled freak-outs and restrained psychedelia is what this rainy day album is all about. An ethereal peak is reached on tracks 6 and 7, "Fourteen" and "Pool and the Shine." The Cranes and Pale Saints are also good references. Why list so many others when describing these guys? Because they are highly derivative but the sound is sufficiently majestic and regal to lend itself a high recommendation. The music demands grandeur and Bethany Curve delivers. - W.C.

The Ptolemic Terrascope - Issue #25

Bethany Curve are a moody bunch of space-rockers who tread a gossamer line woven through the decades between the sound of King Crimson, Joy Division and Labradford; the results are charming, chiming, hypnotic and emotive - huge swathes of treated guitars cavorting across the landscape like rainclouds heralding a summer storm.

Outburn - Issue #7

Bethany Curve constantly confound me. This band simply defies description. They come off as the bastard child of The Curve and My Bloody Valentine, with a healthy dose of Ride thrown in for good measure. Gold is the Santa Cruz quartet's second album for Seattle's Unit Circle and their third release overall. This effort is tighter and more focused than the last album, Skies a Crossed Sky, and they seem to be moving ahead accordingly. The album shifts between moods, both dark and atmospheric, and sometimes shifts into Swervedriver-esque overdrive. Being an E-Bow nut, I really loved "Fourteen," which also showcases that lazy buried Brit vocal style that they have at times. But the song that stands out the most is "Pool and the Shine," which wafts gently on breezes of pure Cocteau Twins bliss, with Bass VI sounding melodies that should make even Robert Smith jealous! The album closes with a quick paced song called "Marasmus" that is bookended by samples a la Pornography by The Cure, and totals out at over 18 minutes due to the samples and feedback madness that typifies a Bethany Curve concert... this record is a great slice of Bethany Curve at their best! - Gary Thrasher

C & D Services Catalog (UK) - [Technically this isn't a review, but it's cool anyway, so it's here]

The follow-up to our exclusive and immense selling 'Skies A Crossed Sky' is in stock now! THIS IS ONE SENSATIONAL ALBUM, BELIEVE ME!!! You will buy it, you will listen to the opening track and you will maybe be slightly apprehensive that I've let you down in my recommendation. But, not only does this track improve on second play, the rest of the entire album also gets better and better, not only as it goes on, but with every successive play! It is absolutely unique, with no frames of reference other than their last album, of which this is no retread. This refines and develops the soundscapes of the first album into one gigantic, organic, living, breathing organism, with massive, expansive soundscapes that are really a brand new life-form in the field of space-rock and like nothing else you've ever experienced. This is music which envelops and engulfs the listener in warm waves of sonic delight, and all of this from a line-up consisting of three amazing electric guitarists and a drummer. The guitars are used in a way unlike any other group I know, with hardly a lead line in sight and yet huge panoramas of sonic attack emerge as though a synth-less Hawkwind were in a new dimesion. The album spends the lion's share of its time in instrumental mode, but the vocals on the songs that do feature on the disc are used as part of the overall mix, adding to the atmospheric nature of the music. From huge, driving wedges of essentially rock music through other-world sonic sound-sculpting, this album is both powerful and dynamic, a massive cauldron of guitars and drums that knows when to tone it down, how to build it up plus how and when to fly like an intergalactic eagle through the new music universe that unfolds before your hypnotic gaze. More than music, this is an experience that has to be enjoyed with the lights out and the volume up - a total mind-trip like few others around. 'Gold' is an album I will be playing for aeons to come and I only hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Good Times - October 15th, 1998

Named after the West Side street on which they once lived, Bethany Curve is an exception to the sound of the area. Actually, their style of music is one uncommon to the U.S. in general. Reminiscent of the liquid bands of the early 90's like Chapterhouse, Slowdive and coincidentally, Curve, Bethany Curve produces a very thought-provoking, dragging, echoey, dark and serious sound that may leave one feeling like his or her existence is the worst thing that could possibly have happened. Did I mention depressing? This is not to say it's bad music, however. Quite the contrary - you can tell some pretty smart guys put loads of time, thought and work into Gold. The outcome: One long string of vast, wide sound hazed over with an eerie, droning orchestra-esque guitar effect and topped with slightly-gothic, Brit-style vocals. - E.M.

NeoGothic - #11

Strano progetto noise / rock / pop dalle vaghe tinte psichedeliche: un pò Dinosaur JR. un pò Rosa Mota ed un pò Sonic Youth, questi Bethany Curve indagano le emozioni e le ripropongono in chiave "sonica". Questo Gold è un affascinante viaggio nel vibrare dell note che si propagano nell'aria: un pò atmosferico ed un pò rumorista, assurdo e tranquillizzante come i primi Smashing Pumpkins. (Albert Hofer)

Carpe Noctem - #15

Okay, so this is the new Bethany Curve disk reviewers seem inevitably to want you to know is a) actually silver, dispite the title, and b) very, very good hypership space rock, despite its gothic undertones. Yeah. Right. Here's what you need to know: Gold, the third release in five years from Bethany Curve is an outstanding CD that has merits far beyond the fact that its sonic smoothness most likely won't drag the ravers from out of the depths of their blissful crank hazes. Gold has some notable similarities with The Cure's Disintegration (especially on tracks like "Drag" and "Over and Out"), in the structure and mood of the songs and in the use of swelling overtures and effectively watery rhythms. The resemblances are, however, superficial, and instead of Disintegration's driving and heartbroken delerium, Gold creates a disturbing sense of inverted claustrophobia, of suspension in a medium either so dark or so perfectly clear that up and down are indistinguishable. The sussurant vocals of Ray Lake, Richard Millang, and Christopher Preston are perfectly matched to these compositions, offering no direction, no fixed point for the lost, only an eerie, uncomfortable accompaniment. - Caitlin R. Kiernan

Gajoob Magazine

Their motto is "Atmosphere, Arrangement, Sound, Layering and Noise." But they can go ahead and shorten it to just plain "Awe-Inspiring," for that is what their music is. Using only guitars, drums, and vocals, Bethany Curve reveal themselves to be wizards of sonic manipulation. With roots in orchestral space rock and indie-goth, the sound is at times dreamy and ethereal ("Carnyval Sweet"), at times noisy and experimental ("Strength"), at times eerily haunting ("Cygnus X-I"), and at times sounding something like a cross between New Order and the Cure ("Temporary"). The one thing you can count on is that Bethany Curve is not to be missed. - Craig Conley 4/15/99

Bizarre - Issue 11

Follow up to the 'Skies A Crossed Sky' album from this Californian band who have been established since '94.

This part of the world has a great tradition in psychedelic/hippie bands, and this band has been lazily lumped together with the likes of the Grateful Dead and Love, et al.

But their sound encompasses ambient, experimental, Gothic and space rock, ok there are semblances to the likes of Pink Floyd and Hawkwind, but that's not the whole story.

The shimmering guitars and floaty vocals put me in mind of bands like Galaxie 500, My Bloody Valentine and Sundial.

Their version of gloomy atmospheric conjures up the Cure's ghostly apparitions, that linger and float before disappearing into the ether.

Crohinga Well - Issue 15

[from a review of several Unit Circle releases] Unit Circle Rekkids is a new name to me and I regret not discovering this alternative label any sooner, because the four releases I got so far are challenging and excellent... Bethany Curve is a Californian space rock band (Santa Cruz area) with a strange line-up: it's a quartet with David Mac Wha as drummer; the other three members (Ray Lake, Richard Millang and Christopher Preston) are all listed as singer/guitarists. Don't know who played bass, keys and samples on the 11 tracks (68') of their untitled CD. Bethany Curve play a pleasant and melodic mix of psychedelic rock that varies from Porcupine Tree-like symphonic workouts through dreamy trips in outer space to totally stoned ambient/electronic soundscapes - Bethany Curve has no problem linking them together into one flowing experience. Great band witha pleasant, accessible sound but with enough strangeness and surprises to keep it interesting. Bethany Curve is a solid future promise for American space rock. The band did one CD on Unit Circle Rekkids prior to this one ("Skies A Crossed Sky", 1996). An absolutely recommended release.

History of Rock Music

The atmosphere on Gold (Unit Circle Rekkids, 1998) is less dark and more psychedelic than on previous recordings, despite implicit tributes to Joy Division (Temporary) and Cure (Movement). The furious pounding and the middle-eastern chanting of Drag and the ghostly melody that floats over the guitar strumming of Strength are more about the dynamics of tension and explosion than they are about hiding in a dark closet.

The six-minute crescendo of Fourteen, the cacophony of distortions of Cygnus X-I, the noise excrements of the 17-minute Marasmus display an austere program of emancipation from the song format.

The Bethany Curve are even more original when they push on the pedals and paint dreamy, ethereal soundscapes like Carnyval Sweet and The Pool and the Shine, that teach Flying Saucer Attack a thing or two about using melody in an abstract context. Instrumental tracks, in general, fare much better than songs.