A BEAUTIFUL CURSE

A Beautiful Curse makes music that is enchanting, mesmerizing, and haunting that captures the band's unique sound (on each) wonderful melodic tune. Each note from A Beautiful Curse's music illustrates the diversity in the band music. - Junior's Cave

...from the groove to the lyrics its soothing ... "as it should be " is a great album to listen to.

Tom Bathurst - Think Tank Promotions - Think Tank Promotions

Weeks and weeks I've been listening to AISB, and I STILL can't decide on my favorite cut. Phenomenal CD!

Adrienne Washington - Fan - Facebook comment

A Beautiful Curse's latest album is "As It Should Be." This album, for the most part, contains lower tempo Electronic music; which at times is quite psychedelic and is aimed at almost being "positive dream music" for the listener.

The opener, "On the Other Side," starts off with beautiful female vocals over an almost gritty and menacing background rumble before a trip-hop like beat comes in to take over the song. "A Mind of Its Own" is a more fantasy-like song in which a steady beat is held down with ambient sounds and vocals fading in and out from all directions. The song, "This Is My House," is an all out Electronica track with a dancing and pulsating beat that will make you want to stand up and groove. This album is an amalgam of contemporary psychedelic styles which all come from a place of positive inspiration.

If you appreciate slightly hallucinatory electronic sounds, or like any type of dream-like music, then you might agree this album is exactly "As It Should Be."

-Sean B. and the RadioIndy.com Reviewer Team - Radioindy.com

"On the other Side" opens the album with an ethereal intro into a playful bass driven melody with filtered guitars whining over the acoustic rhythmic guitar and female vocals gliding with ease between reverberating harmonizations and giddy verse lines. "The Soul Divine" has a sound with roots in the Cure - straight forward drum work meets wispy pads and warm male vocals. Both "The Soul Divine" and "A Lot Like Diamonds" sparkle with catchy key melodies that echo in time with the wah guitar, both tinged with jazz drums and underlying electronics and mixed vocals. In particular, the end to "A Lot Like Diamonds" demands some respect as the synth line closes the song out. Worthy of particular notice is "A Mind of its Own" which features a nice change in the form of spoken word and is permeated with more of a hip hop feel with stuttered samples keeping time with the beat. "This is my House" comes out the gate with a fast harp and synth line and a classic house beat pounding its way through this instrumental anthem - it weaves through thick pads and adds some stuttering percussive samples and fades in and out an atmospheric guitar. "Delicate" is reminiscent of Air with its warm synths and slow swing drums. "Everything's Changing" has my attention from the first low kick hit - in this track, the drums are well-rounded and swagger through light synths and soothing vocals that crescendo with a wispy low-frequency oscilator addition.

As a whole, "As It Should Be" is very well produced and varies in its influences from song to song, a variance in style which, coupled with the variance between male and female vocals, may draw in a listener or push them away. Though not completely my kind of thing, it has some gems that deserve to be heard.

-- James Church [8/10]

http://www.connexionbizarre.net/reviews/r_beautifulcurse_aisb.htm - Connexion Bizarre

The best film music, whether it comes in the form of a score or a soundtrack, is dramatic in sound and emotion. Producers use wide dynamics and wide arrays of instruments, drawing listeners into moods and experiences. The best film music is imaginative and escapist. Of all these things, the only element missing from Kenny James’ A Beautiful Curse project is the film itself.

The album, called As It Should Be, began as a soundtrack and music licensing project, but outgrew its more commercial intent to become a full-length LP. Its cinematic origins are apparent in the record’s adventurous mix of Trip Hop, Downtempo, and even Rock music. As It Should Be explores a variety of sounds and styles, and thus carries the listener through a variety of themes and moods. Think of the album as a collection of short stories, each with its own plot, but all of them sharing the vision and imagination of one writer.

James appropriately describes the album as “a collision of groove and mood for the senses.” With its haunting melodies and deep rhythms combined with an ambient rock air, we think you’ll agree.

Written by Zane - Leisure Lab

A Beautiful Curse started out as a project intended to write music for movies & television, but has grown into something more organic over time. Musician and producer Kenny James (George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars, 24-7 Spyz, The Samples) began this project in 2004 while producing works for various Indie films. After meeting guitar player Brian Skeel (Contingence), the two hit it off and started working together. By 2007 Skeel was a vested member of A Beautiful Curse, but something was still missing. In 2008, the band discovered vocalist/pianist Savannah Kocher. Within a month of finding her, Kocher was inducted as a member of A Beautiful Curse. The synergy the trio discovered had much more life and vitality to it than just a writing project. It soon became clear that A Beautiful Curse would have more facets than that. Cut to 2009, and the release of As It Should Be, a stunningly ambitious and divergent album that thrums with its own inner life.

As It Should Be opens with On The Other Side, a dark and vaguely Middle Eastern sounding tune that owes serious homage to early Sarah McLachlan recordings. Vocalist Savannah Kocher has the same ethereal air that infused McLachlan's early work. The sound here is a bit more of the electronic age, creating a stark tapestry against which Kocher's voice plays perfectly. At about the five minute mark the song kicks into overdrive, with a heavy guitar-driven segment reminiscent of Evanescence and A Beautiful Curse begins to displays some Prog tendencies you might not have previously guessed at. The mix of crushing Rock/Metal and Ethereal, near-Ambient Rock is quite unusual. The Soul Divine kicks off with some headphone worthy sounds reminiscent of the great albums of the 1970's and develops into another Ambient/Prog Rock/Trance hybrid. Fans of Pink Floyd will dig the vibe here. A Lot Like Diamonds is more in the dance club realm, carrying a sparse and halting melody line surrounded by much percussion and electronic sound. Kocher is entrancing on vocals, but the song just doesn't seem to have a lot to say, and while the rhythmic nature of the arrangement has a lulling effect, the song gets bogged down in its own complacency.

A Mind Of It's Own features a distinctive arrangement of rhythms and sounds supporting the free-form rap of Kenny James. This is one of the more interesting songs on the disc, featuring a roving bass line that sounds like it could have come from an early Police album. This Is My House takes us back to the 1980's in a Jan Hammer-inspired instrumental that will get your feet moving. Delicate brings slow jams into the 21st century with a sound Barry White would approve of. This was perhaps my least favorite song on the disc, but it accomplished what I presume the artists were trying to achieve. A Beautiful Curse closes out with Everything Is Changing, a bit of electronic dance craft that sticks to formula over creative force. Unlike much of the album, this feels like something of a cookie cutter track, created perhaps to fill out the album but not really offering much for listeners to dig into.

A Beautiful Curse suffers from trying to be too many things. Hard rock? Check. Lyric/Ambient Rock? Check. Electrohouse/Dance? Yep. Rap? Got that too. R&B? Yes. The difficulty becomes that by the end of As It Should Be the listener has no real idea who or what A Beautiful Curse wants to be. The band is at their best with Kocher on vocals and with the mix of Electronic and Rock genres. This is an album constructed for the age of downloads, with single songs that will play well to multiple genres, but it will be hard to build a long-term fan base from such divergence in sounds. When a band aims to be flavor of the month they may well get what they aim for, but nobody wants old flavors once they're used up, and A Beautiful Curse has too much talent to just be flavors of the month. Hopefully over time the band will pick a direction that at least becomes a primary sound and dabble elsewhere. As It Should Be is a strong collection of songs, but it's too scattershot to really be called an album.

Rating: 3.5 Stars (Out of 5) - Wildy's World