CURSES — Perfect High EP

Curses – Perfect High EP, released on Altered Circuits as ALT028, is a five-track 12-inch that brings Luca Venezia’s dark, romantic vision of electronic music into a tightly focused club record. Released in September 2026, the EP draws on Curses’ long-running fascination with EBM, new beat, synth-pop, disco, punk vocals and the stranger edges of electronic music, but avoids functioning as a simple exercise in retro revivalism. Instead, Perfect High turns those references into a contemporary dancefloor language built around detuned synthesizers, gated electronic drums, unusual vocal treatments, guitar textures and constantly evolving arrangements. Curses is the project of New York-born, Berlin-based artist Luca Venezia, whose musical history stretches from his earlier work as Drop the Lime and the Brooklyn underground through his later Curses project and the wider Acid Punx universe. His work has consistently connected club music with darker post-punk, new wave, EBM and synth-driven traditions. In a recent interview with Mixmag Spain, Venezia described Perfect High as an EP deliberately made for the club before his next band album, combining his love of new beat and experimental disco with the attitude of early EBM and punk vocals. That intention is central to the record: these are tracks designed to function on a dancefloor, but they retain the personality and theatricality of Curses’ broader musical world. The EP opens with the title track, “Perfect High”, which immediately establishes the record’s combination of club propulsion and pop-oriented melodic detail. The production is centred on detuned, chorus-heavy synthesizer leads that give the track a slightly unstable, saturated character. Rather than presenting a clean, futuristic synth sound, Curses allows the leads to carry a degree of distortion and movement, creating the sensation of analogue machinery being pushed into a more emotional register. The rhythmic foundation keeps everything anchored. Gated electronic drums provide a tight, repetitive framework, while the synthesizers continually introduce new hooks and variations. This is one of the defining characteristics of Perfect High EP: individual sounds are introduced with enough character that they could easily become the main focus, yet the arrangement never loses its forward momentum. “Perfect High” therefore feels dense without becoming cluttered, with each new element contributing to the overall propulsion. “Weapon Of Time” follows with a different emphasis. Here, the percussion becomes one of the central musical voices. Clockwork-like rhythmic details create a precise, mechanical sensation, while polished hooks and electronic textures keep the track moving between new wave atmosphere and contemporary club functionality. The track illustrates Curses’ ability to use repetition without making the production static; the rhythmic pattern becomes a platform around which other sounds can evolve. The contrast between the first two tracks is subtle but important. “Perfect High” is defined by its expressive, detuned synth work, while “Weapon Of Time” focuses more heavily on the precision of its percussion. Together they establish the EP’s central balance between machine-like rhythm and human emotional character. The third track, “Killer Instinct”, pushes further toward the darker and more physical side of the record. Its sound design incorporates proto rolling-and-scratching squelches, creating an acidic and slightly abrasive quality within the otherwise polished production. The effect is less about classic acid-house nostalgia than about using the vocabulary of early machine music as another texture within Curses’ broader palette. “Killer Instinct” is also where the EP’s relationship with EBM and new beat becomes particularly apparent. The track is mechanical but sensual, repetitive but constantly shifting, with the rhythmic framework maintaining a strong club pulse while the electronic textures create an increasingly tense atmosphere. The gated R-50 rhythm concept remains important, providing a rigid structure underneath the more expressive synth and vocal elements. “Dare 2 Dream” moves into a more ominous emotional space. The track is distinguished by dark choral textures that give it a dramatic, almost cinematic dimension. Rather than using the choir as a conventional melodic centerpiece, Curses incorporates it into the atmosphere, allowing the voices to hover around the rhythm and synthesizer work. This creates a darker sense of scale while preserving the EP’s compact dancefloor focus. The title “Dare 2 Dream” also captures something fundamental about Curses’ approach to electronic music. The production is rooted in machines and club functionality, but it is not emotionally detached. The combination of ominous voices, electronic rhythm and expressive synthesis gives the track a sense of drama that distinguishes it from straightforward electro or techno tools. It is dance music with a strong visual and emotional imagination. The final track, “Blasted”, features Andi and provides the EP with its most collaborative moment. Curses and Andi co-produced the track, and their shared musical interests make the pairing particularly natural. In his recent Mixmag Spain interview, Venezia described Andi as a close friend, an exceptional producer and one of his favourite DJs, noting their shared interest in darker electronic music, goth influences, freestyle Latin music and New York synth-pop from the 1980s and 1990s. “Blasted” translates that connection into a synth-driven groove with a glossy, sensual surface. Compared with the darker tension of “Dare 2 Dream” and the mechanical pressure of “Killer Instinct”, the closing track feels more luxurious and seductive. Yet the underlying rhythmic discipline remains intact. It is an appropriate conclusion because it brings together many of the EP’s defining characteristics: electronic drums, synthesizers, vocals, pop sensibility and underground club energy. The five-track sequence gives Perfect High EP a strong internal progression. The title track introduces the detuned synth language, “Weapon Of Time” develops the clockwork percussion, “Killer Instinct” introduces more abrasive and acidic textures, “Dare 2 Dream” deepens the atmosphere through ominous choirs, and “Blasted” closes with a sleek collaborative groove. Despite the stylistic references to different eras, the record never feels like a collection of retro exercises. The production is deliberately contemporary, with the historical influences functioning as raw material rather than as a fixed aesthetic template. For DJs, ALT028 occupies an interesting space between EBM, new beat, synth-pop, electro, disco and darker house-oriented club music. The tracks are detailed enough to work in sets where atmosphere and personality matter, but their rhythmic foundations remain direct and functional. “Perfect High” can provide a strong opening statement, “Weapon Of Time” and “Killer Instinct” increase the mechanical tension, “Dare 2 Dream” introduces a darker dramatic element, and “Blasted” provides a sensual closing groove. The physical 12-inch format is particularly appropriate for this material. Altered Circuits has presented ALT028 as a dedicated club release, while the label’s Brussels identity and Curses’ own connection to the European underground place the EP within a contemporary network of DJs, producers and collectors interested in electronic music beyond conventional genre boundaries. Specialist distributors classify the record variously around electro, new wave, cosmic, Italo disco and electronic music, reflecting the unusually broad palette contained within the five tracks. Curses – Perfect High EP is ultimately a highly coherent meeting point between underground club music and pop-oriented electronic songwriting. Its strength comes from the way Luca Venezia balances nostalgic machine aesthetics with contemporary production: detuned and chorus-heavy synthesizers, precise gated rhythms, unusual samples, vocals, electronic drums and darker atmospheric elements all operate within a clear dancefloor framework. ALT028 is therefore not simply an EBM or new-beat revival record; it is a modern Curses statement that transforms those influences into something sleek, sensual, restless and unmistakably built for the club.