CURSES

Luca Venezia, the Italo-American artist performing and recording as CURSES, spent his formative years skating New York, haunting CBGBs, and stumbling into early-nineties raves before most people had agreed on what to call the music being played there. That collision of punk attitude and dancefloor electronics became the permanent address of his sound: dark, romantic, and restlessly cross-genre, threading post-punk and EBM through Italo synths and four-on-the-floor drums. A move to Berlin in the mid-2010s sharpened the focus; he runs the Safer At Night imprint, DJs and performs live with guitar and vocals, and since 2021 has curated the critically praised Next Wave Acid Punx compilation series, three volumes of hard-to-find club music spanning industrial origins to the present day. Few working producers track their influences this meticulously, and fewer still can make the archaeology feel like a party.