Words by Andrew Ryan Fetter
When Secret Machines released their 2020 album Awake In the Brain Chamber, it was almost as if the band was exactly that. Awake. After being dormant for a decade Brandon Curtis and Josh Garza decided to revive the band and their momentum has kept up. Working with Slowdive drummer Simon Scott, the band remastered their 2008 self titled album and then revisited an album called The Moth, The Lizard and The Secret Machines, which the band had not yet finished before entering their hiatus. I got the chance to chat with Brandon about revisiting your past and learning to be compassionate to yourself while you explore the different ways our brains affect our art.
Off Shelf: Secret Machines have definitely kept busy the last couple of years. Last year you remastered your self-titled album, what was it like to sort of breathe new life into it after 14 years?
Brandon Curtis: It’s funny that you put it that way because I had been reluctant to revisit stuff from that era, both the self-titled and this new one The Moth, The Lizard and The Secret Machines. Basically when Josh and I reconnected and were working on Awake In The Brain Chamber, it just rekindled aspects of our working relationship and kind of reawakened my own curiosity about our past catalog.
So when we were finishing The Moth…we asked each other how we wanted to release this. I had come across the work of Simon Scott and had become a fan of how he processes sound and the way he handled stuff in his solo material. I was just so impressed by how the mastering turned out for The Moth…, we decided to have him remaster our self-titled record too. So hearing those masters come back, it was the closest to what I remembered it sounding like originally in 2008 before it had even been mixed. There are songs like “The Fire Is Waiting” and a lot of the longer, sprawling songs that were meant to have a more spacey depth to it. And Scott kind of brought that back.
Looking back it occurred to me that we as artists are having a conversation with the mastering engineer, but when you’re working with a label like Warner Bros, they are having those same conversations. And they’re looking for a strong center channel, vocal heavy mix. They want that all really clear and straightforward. The masters from that time came out exactly how they wanted it to. So hearing these remasters it felt like “this is what we wanted.” And I understand their point of view, they want to sell as many records as possible and they feel like that is the formula. But that wasn’t what we had wanted to do. So it was a relief and a validation that what we wanted was right.
OS: Right because especially if it’s a record that’s already been released, people are familiar with it already and have had so much time with it. But you get the chance to say “Well this is more what we were going for.”
BC: Yeah for sure. We were lucky that we had the chance to revisit it and get it as close to our original vision.
OS: It’s one of the things I noticed almost immediately, even listening again. The vocals aren’t at the forefront, but more just like another instrument and just an added layer that adds to the overall sound.
BC: That to me is always where I wanted the vocal to sit in the mix. As a singer, I don’t consider myself an amazing talent, but I do like the notion of my voice contributing to the melodic language. I’ve never felt that it needed to be prioritized over everything else. However, that is a conversation that you will always lose with a label. They always want the vocals louder. So it was nice to find a place that I can work with it long enough that it tickles me enough. But Josh is very much a “make the vocals louder” guy so when we can come to an agreement on things it really comes together well.
OS: Well the way he drums that actually makes sense.
BS: [laughs] Oh yeah, totally.
OS: So, since the timeline is a little unconventional, do you consider The Moth, The Lizard and The Secret Machines a “NEW” record in the official sense?
BC: I mean, not to be pedantic about it but obviously no. We’ve been working on it for so long. But I do think of it as newly completed. I wouldn’t have said it existed in a finished form before. Not that we were embarrassed by it, but it just hadn’t been finished. The songs on Awake In the Brain Chamber were from the point of view of after the songs on The Moth, almost like a reaction to The Moth. But the public presentation of the music is inverted.
OS: I’m curious about the title of The Moth, The Lizard and The Secret Machines and where that came from.
BC: I had just been thinking about the feelings and energy on the record connected to these concepts. So the moth brain has a strong attraction to light and heat, and it’s more chaotic. The lizard brain has a more psycho/spiritual/sexual energy and you’re chasing more physicality, almost in a blind pursuit. So from my point of view where we were as a band, was just reconciling some of the more primal and innate urges in life and concentrating on the extremes of those two brains. It sounds a lot more like an acid trip than it is. It wasn’t meant as a dissertation, just more of a quick thought and it stuck. And I thought about where do I personally fit in that continuum and states of being.
OS: What were some of the things that stood out that maybe you didn’t notice before and kind of changed your perspective.
BC: I was feeling pretty insecure and vulnerable at the time and not having confidence. I was trying to spackle over what I saw were imperfections or flaws in the music. I learned there are things you can do with digital recording that can almost perfect those sounds and make them fit better. When I was listening back the first thing I did was take all that stuff off and just listened to what we had recorded. And what I had then heard before as flaws or imperfections I now heard as character and personality. I think I was just able to be more compassionate to us as a band and me as a musician then I was back then. And coming back to it I was more accepting of it, for better or worse. Just to let it be what it is. I mean so much of it felt like chaos and noise, but also really natural in a fucked up way.