Secret Machines - Welcome To The Machines

Brandon Curtis is always keeping busy. In between gearing up Secret Machines for another European tour and indeed convening with the other two members of his band to put ideas in place for their next record, he is in Indiana producing South Africans BLK JKS (pronounced Black Jacks).

There has been little let-up since the release of the band’s third, self-titled album in January, an album that has marked a sort of rebirth for the Dallas-born, New York-based trio.

Because, of course, this was the first without Brandon’s brother Benjamin, their erstwhile guitarist who had defined their shuddering alt-prog since their 2004 debut Now Here Is Nowhere. Benjamin left to pursue a more imaginative pop avenue with School Of Seven Bells (who, all being well, we speak to next issue), leaving a sizable hole that Brandon plugged with old Dallas cohort Phil Karnats, a very different presence. That, in a nutshell, is why Secret Machines have all the hallmarks of an entirely new band. The eponymous title of the new album alone marks the redefining process.

You could even say being in a band was, for Brandon, injected with a new passion he hadn’t experienced since his early days of playing with friends in Dallas.

“It was a kind of back to basics approach,” he says, “more related to where I was when I first started playing music, and I was thinking about the same kind of feeling I was feeling when I first started writing songs. A point of origin sort of thing…”

The new album is a passionate display of heavy, loud rock with deft touches of Curtis’s familiarly leftfield song structure, and is not as prog-rock as most people would have them. The new songs were actually born when Ben was still around in 2007.

“I guess I thought I was writing what I thought would be new music, and then when Benjamin said he was leaving I started playing the stuff with Josh and we decided to continue.

“The music was starting this way with or without Benjamin, although I think it would have travelled over a different path with him. I think whenever you involve someone else it affects the journey. Once Benjamin or Phil became involved it would have taken on a different life.”

Obviously, the familiar Secret Machines sound has been transformed, as has the dynamic within the group, completed by drummer Josh Garza.

“They share a lot [Ben and Phil] in that they’re both very passionate musicians and very meticulous, but they’re very different as guitarists. When I hear them play I hear their personalities.

“I’m really excited about a whole new perspective on the situation, it’s kind of empowering, but I was heading in this direction anyway.”

It’s fair to say then, that this album is a combination of Curtis’s natural creative development since 2006’s Ten Silver Drops and the direction that Karnats’ inevitable influence turned his original vision.

Brandon had been listening to a variety of music while he was putting together Secret Machines, including Boris and other similarly brutal fare. This influence Brandon refers to as “so dark and heavy but so beautiful; having this melancholy but aggressive feeling. An aggressive sadness.” This sums up the Secret Machines album perfectly. A robust misery. An angry depression. A combative dejection. And so forth.

Benjamin’s departure aside, this album has been an upheaval for Secret Machines in other ways. Reinventing themselves as a ‘new band’ apparently jarred with Warner Brothers (or to be more specific, Reprise) and the label promptly decided Secret Machines were no longer the artist they thought they had.

“We presented this record to Warner Brothers,” says Curtis, “and we had different opinions on how the record would be recorded and presented. Even when we were starting to make this record we had a different philosophical approach to the circumstances – who should produce it and stuff like that. For Josh and I, we felt it was important to stay as producers and the people calling the shots in the studio. We were willing to collaborate but didn’t want to give up total control.

“Warner Brothers disagreed but let us do it anyway. Then we turned in the record and they felt it wasn’t the record we should have made for us in our time right now. They wanted to sell millions of records but we wanted to make a record that was in our hearts. At the end of the day they were very generous to us and very fair, and gave us the rights to the record back.”

It was World’s Fair / Cooperative Music who eventually released the album… “I’m very happy to have a new situation and I’m not missing [Warner Brothers].”

Secret Machines’ history is an illustrious one. Not least because they count David Bowie amongst their fans (he wonders into their gigs when they play in New York), as well as Jason Pierce and Kevin Shields. Then there is that rare feat of appealing to both an indie fraternity as well as those into metal – all their fans reaching typically fanatical and meticulous levels of adoration. There is also a fantastically theatrical live show with lights, lasers and other extravagant visuals.

“It’s really expensive to travel with it,” says Curtis, “so I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to do it or not [on the European tour]. We will always pay attention to the atmosphere when we play, whether or not we have expensive production. I wish it were cheaper.”

As work intensifies for Secret Machines on the follow up to what we can tentatively say was a ‘watershed’ record, Brandon Curtis is in a position to assess his own band’s future with that injection of the spirit of youth, as well as admire his brother’s marvellous new band.

“I am really enjoying seeing the fruits of his labour,” he says. “School Of Seven Bells has been a passion for him for such a long time. He’s cared about it so much and I’m really proud and excited for him. It’s his work coming to light in just his way. I’m enjoying his success by contact.”
http://www.tourdates.co.uk/LondonTourdates/issue-040/2009/02/13/1396-Secret-Machines-Welcome-To-The-Machines