Biography

A Beautiful Curse is the visionary brainchild of freelance musician and producer Kenny James. As much a concept as it is a project, the music of A Beautiful Curse has a distinctively ethereal, hauntingly alluring, ambient quality that is a perfectly obscure collision of dramatic rock, downtempo-electronica and groove persuasions. Impossible to define, A Beautiful Curse does not conform to one mode in any given piece, much less a firm overall genre. Put simply, A Beautiful Curse is where mood and groove collide.

While James is the driving creative contributor to A Beautiful Curse, he also loves to collaborate. Once he has developed the concept, written the lyrics and composed the initial melodies, James enlists the talent of other musicians to record the enhanced instrumental effects with him. His library of gifted artists is vast and James does not hesitate to add their flair and panache to his repertoire.

James’ consummate perfectionism is apparent in the final product of these collective efforts – every deliberate note and nuance is laid down in precise and impeccable form. The sound is delivered through finely layered vocals, instrumentals and electronics, which are molded into subtle modulations and steely rhythms. A Beautiful Curse is an intricate collage of divergent instrumentalists and styles, resulting in a completely unique and intensely mesmerizing sound.

The album “As It Should Be” was the premiere 2009 release for A Beautiful Curse. The music is soft, but deep, enhanced by passionate electronics and instrumentals. Singles from “As It Should Be” have been featured in a number of television and cable shows worldwide. Most recently, A Lot Like Diamonds was played in two episodes of a reality show called “Brew Masters” on The Discovery Channel. As A Beautiful Curse was originally semi-intended to be a project of cinema/television background music, James is very pleased with this inadvertent development.

In 2015, A Beautiful Curse released its eagerly anticipated sophomore release entitled “A Scar Is Born”. Definitely not suffering from the dreaded “sophomore slump”, “…Scar…” packs 10 songs depicting Kenny’s year long stay in war-torn Afghanistan back in 2011. Again, drawing from a wide array of genres, “…Scar…” taps into the soul of a person searching for themselves and destined to grow from their experiences. To call the album a personal account is an understatement yet it’s not so weighty as to not be accessible. One of the songs, titled “Ashes”, was featured in the full-length, award winning independent film “An American Terror” prior to the release of “…Scar…”.

The future looks bright for A Beautiful Curse as the project is writing the feature song for the upcoming full-length feature film “Zohe” to be released in the spring of 2016, and pre-production demos are already underway for the next ABC release, scheduled for release in 2017.

-written by Tori Lee