Mica Levi, Coby Sey and Brother May expose the history of one of the UK’s most distinct musical collectives.
This function was initially released in Fact’s A/W 2021 problem, which is offered to purchase here.
For a long time, the meaning of what CURL really is hasactually been rather unclear. It’s approximately an concept that endedupbeing a hand-drawn logodesign and a mixtape; a one-off program, then a live program; a collection, a label, a visiting band. The task — let’s call it a cumulative — is now 5 years running and a full-blown organism, continual by a core of 3 organisers based in South London and an connected scene of peers, goodfriends and fans extending out into other nations. There are about 50-plus multidisciplinary members who are part of stated indefinable scene who are probably, however not always, joined by a typical love of music. ‘If they wear’t, they’re extremely great at hiding it’, states Coby Sey, speaking through video chat on a four-way group call with 2 other CURL co-founders and me. There are connection problems. Mica Levi is racking their brain to negate this audiophile theory of the cumulative’s single basic requirement. Brother May (rightly) believes it’s a moot point: ‘They put out music, so it would be rather puzzling.’
It’s the week of a fairly hurried and last-minute picture shoot for CURL, who’ve handled to muster together their legendary band of affiliates into a single area in the middle of a pandemic. Their initial place of option, Rye Wax, is too little to accommodate the numbers. Their 2nd, as is generally the case with once-squatted-industrial-buildings-cum-government-funded-regeneration plans is now home to more irreversible occupants and forthatreason not readilyavailable. Levi is quarantined with coronavirus, so the initial date hasactually been moved a week lateron than initially meant and the group will be taking up house in the concrete second-floor basement area of 180 The Strand for the weekend.
CURL Compilation 2 factors Pelin Pelin and infant___asl are amongst those who program up on the Saturday. Roxanne Tataei and Halcyon Veil label artists CJ Calderwood and junior xl of Lol K are there on the Sunday. Not everybody, of course, can make it on such brief notification, and it would be difficult to confine together every single CURL member in one location at the finest of times, let alone right now. Those who can’t be there will be represented by black-and-white pictures, if they send them. An image of one or 2 will be held up to the electroniccamera from smartdevices. The rest will be there in spirit, just to be scrappily represented in print through a collage of professionalphotographer Joseph Hayes’s images taken in a load of apparently random items scattered throughout the concrete flooring—tin foil, mic stands, caps, dried moss, some fruit. ‘It is kind of warts and all’, states Levi, on the intractability that is the CURL monster and its rowdy dependence on contingency. ‘Without sounding too tacky or silly about it, part of the altering, last minute, “hanging on” of whatever is it gets untidy, and that’s what I truly like about it.’
What ‘it’ is, is still up for analysis. Drawing a line under where it all started is even more complex, with each of the 3 co-founders having their own concept of how it began. ‘I feel that CURL is simply one of the times that we’ve chose to formalise what we do and put a name on it’, states Sey, describing that the name is however a chapter of a much longer timeline of models: ‘like a particular book of a series of books’.
Perhaps one of the clearest proto-formalizations of the scene occurred in 2015, at a home celebration next to a bar in the London district of Loughborough Junction. Organised by honorary CURL member and then-Kemerton Road housemate Hannah TW, the occasion saw manufacturer Sey sing for the veryfirst time to a live audience, debuting tracks from his 2017 Whities 010: Transport for Lewisham EP release. He lateron played sampler and drum maker in an improvised sound and ambient set with artist and drummer for Kae Tempest, Sampha and the late MF Doom, Kwake Bass. Dean Blunt partner Joanne Robertson carriedout her druggy lo-fi grunge too, as did Micachu & The Shapes members Marc Pell (aka Suitman Jungle) and Raisa Khan, at around the arrival of the band’s Good Sad Happy Bad name modification. Farai ally and solo artist Tony Harewood and TØNE bandmate Joe Marshall likewise carriedout, right there in Levi’s bedroom. It was loaded with pals and associates about a year before the three-storey shared home was offered and its residents distributed.
‘I would state that even however there are all those ties and familytrees, what’s intriguing about Coby discussing that Loughborough Junction gig is that it’s kind of not too far behind and everybody was beginning to sort of establish in a particular instructions’, Levi clarifies. ‘But I have to state, some individuals who were in that gig are in CURL and some individuals aren’t, so the genesis of other artists, and the live versions of CURL, and the sensation and the tone, and the brand-new individuals that got included was truly set up in Rye Wax.’ Starting nearly precisely a year lateron in July 2016, the dark and low-ceilinged environments of the Peckham Rye record store and bar played host to the veryfirst CURL series program, which opened with efficiencies from Tirzah and Jacob Samuel. There was a CURL x Tenderfoot occasion at the Elephant and Castle neighborhood garden Grow Elephant (now gone) that Roberston played with Kool Music, as well as another improv set by Sey, along with Ben Vince and Bianca Scout. Series 2 back at Rye Wax would combine CURL as an integrated cumulative by having just unannounced efficiencies from the likes of Brother May, Blu Rainey, TCR and Leah Walker (aka Relax Kevin). The next year, in 2017, the ever-morphing job would make it all the method into Serpentine Galleries’ Park Nights live efficiency program, consistingof Sudanese opera vocalist Mohamed and DIY café and womxn-run cooking cumulative Chats as part of its substantial lineup. ‘I’d state a lot of individuals who are included will haveactually understood each other for years, however CURL began in 2016’, clarifies Levi, inserting on Sey’s idea that the cumulative has existed in one kind or another consideringthat well inthepast then. ‘There was a minute where whatever kind of changed together and endedupbeing arranged in a particular method, which I guess is what we’re talking about.’
For context, it is possible to appearance even evenmore back, to the germination of a noise spanning north and south east London at the point where the city’s punk and rock tradition satisfied British hip-hop and electronica in the mid-2000s. It was here that an early development of a post-grime scene emerged with the music of DELS, Ghostpoet and Hot Chip; The xx, Jack Peñate and The Invisible. Theirs was a tumbledown electroacoustic visual, where rap emcees would carryout to live instrumentation, while samplers and drum devices were a important addition to any band. Often linking through MySpace and recording at home, these unanticipated associations established at the height of a freshly digitised mixtape culture, yielding tracklistings of apparently diverse musical designs that were loosely strung together on drops like Levi’s Kwesachu mixtape cooperations — as Micachu — with Sey’s older sibling, Kwes. This essential technique to cross-genre partnership and experimentation withstands with CURL, where a various choice of contributing artists — like Ben Babbitt, T.M.D.S., Bunny Hoova and Ydegirl; Klein, Sissy Fuss and brotherorsisters Rebecca and Olivia Salvadori — are provided in 2 varied yet remarkably meaningful CURL collections.
The really realisation of this interview function — a veryfirst for CURL — is the outcome of years of incidental interactions with stated scene, having myself moved to London in 2011 and taken part as primarily a viewer because conference, and befriending, Levi in Australia 12 years earlier. They were touring Micachu & The Shapes’s veryfirst album Jewellery — launched on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records in 2009 — with bandmembers Pell and Khan, while I was still living where I was born, in Perth. There was a Bandstand Busking video submitted to YouTube around the verysame time, a live acoustic variation of the biking avant-pop track ‘Curly Teeth’ carriedout on the band’s notoriously makeshift instruments of food tins and adjusted guitars. While its scrappy discussion and accompanying vigor for contingency brings into the technique of the CURL cumulative, you’d be incorrect if you idea that tune had anything to do with the name. ‘It simply came to my head arbitrarily because I keptinmind there was a time in 2013 where Mica had a studio at Trinity Buoy Wharf, you understand near the East India Dock in East London,’ describes Sey, popular amongst goodfriends for his significant recall capability with strangely particular information. ‘For some factor the memory popped up in my head of Mica purchasing a Curly Wurly chocolate.’
The requirement for a name came when Levi and longtime partner Brother May were looking to release EP May and Meeks in 2016, choosing they may as well do it themselves. ‘Mica recommended that we self-release, and that we do it with Coby duetothefactthat Coby was thinking of beginning a label. We might simply signupwith forces and do it together as a trio’, Brother May recollects. ‘We had this task and we were like, “what oughtto we call it, Curly Wurly, Curl, Curl Recordings, Curly?” We had a coupleof various names in a hat however, to cut a long story brief, we all concurred with Curl Recordings.’ It was from that point that the job established into a logodesign, drawn by hand by Brother May and digitised by Coby, then a program at Rye Wax, naturally unfolding into what it is today. ‘It’s sort of like a tree. We all act as the roots truly, however us 3 keep it afloat through activities and gettingintouchwith individuals for collections; attempting to push the program for us to kind of work together. Not that we wear’t work together currently, however welcoming individuals down to reveals, workingtogether more with everyone that we can’, Brother May includes. ‘CURL can assistance our buddies as much as our buddies can assistance us.’
As both one of these supporting members and an observer of CURL’s advancement because well inthepast it endedupbeing developed with a name in