Secret Machines: The Road Back to Nowhere
For half a decade, Secret Machines were the definitive indie-rock power-trio of their generation, creating a monolithic space-rock sound from the primal thud of drummer Josh Garza and the hypnotic instrumental textures of brothers Brandon and Benjamin Curtis. Falling snuggly in that psychedelic space between the jamband and guitar-rock scenes, they played powerful sets at festivals like Bonnaroo and Langerado, working with Madison House’s management wing and staging conceptual shows like an “in-the-round” tour.
And for brief moments on their fourth album, Awake in the Brain Chamber—which was issued in August, seven years after Benjamin’s death and 12 years after their previous LP—they time-travel back to that indelible era. “If you close your eyes, that’s the original Secret Machines for a minute,” Garza says of “Everything Starts.”
The atmospheric track features a posthumous cameo from Benjamin, who left the lineup in 2007 to focus on his dream-pop project School of Seven Bells. He died six years later from lymphoma at age 35—but his presence, both sonically and spiritually, is crucial to Awake in the Brain Chamber, helping his bandmates process that tragedy.
“[The record] was a good way to close the chapter,” Garza says. “It ties it all together. It’s our little sonic prayer to Ben. We’re able to let go.”
The road to Brain Chamber began way back in 2002, when the trio ventured from Dallas to Chicago and recorded their debut EP, September 000. The signature ingredients were already there: Brandon’s creaky voice and wide-screen arrangements, Benjamin’s colorful guitar and Garza’s Bonham-sized drums, which thudded like barbells against a sweaty gym floor. But Secret Machines came off more like lo-fi indie-rockers than the psychedelic krautrock voyagers that would later occupy their own distinct corner of the indie-jam universe.
Upon settling in New York City, the band maximized their music’s physical scope on a pair of revered LPs for Warner’s Reprise Records: 2004’s Now Here Is Nowhere and 2006’s Ten Silver Drops.
And, after Benjamin’s exit, Brandon and Garza recruited guitarist Phil Karnats and carried on for one more record, 2008’s Secret Machines. They also recorded a wildly experimental LP called The Moth, the Lizard and the Secret Machines but ended up shelving the material during the mixing process—mostly for practical reasons.
“The label [that put out Secret Machines] went bankrupt halfway through the release campaign, so we were kind of label-less and lost,” Brandon says. “We decided to record another record—and, not to be overdramatic, but it was very sympathetic to the plight of Sisyphus. Everything was an uphill battle. Josh moved to LA, and we put Secret Machines on the back burner. I didn’t think we were going to do anything again. There was no falling out or ‘fuck you’ or anything like that. It was just a gradual dissipation of whatever energy there was to keep the project going.”
Around that time, Brandon took what most rock artists would consider to be a pretty sick replacement gig: touring keyboardist with Interpol. “I was like, ‘This will be fine. I’ll get to perform and travel, and I like those guys. It’s a good job,’” he says. “But I just started writing songs as a natural [outlet]. I was busy, but it kept me motivated.”
Those songs, including some that turned up on Brain Chamber, began their lives under the Cosmicide banner. “‘So Far Down,’ ‘Talos’ Corpse,’ ‘A New Disaster’—those were the first three songs I was working on as myself,” he continues, noting that he released the latter two online—in their original form—in 2013 and 2015, respectively. “The band name Cosmicide just came to me, and it felt strangely significant for some reason.”
Yet, even if they were no longer bandmates, the Curtis brothers remained close, personally and creatively. Brandon helped Benjamin produce and mix School of Seven Bells’ third LP, 2012’s Ghostory, and Benjamin returned the favor by serving as a sounding board on the Cosmicide songs. “It was this conversation of trading ideas,” he says.
But, after Benjamin’s sudden lymphoma diagnosis in February 2013 and untimely passing later that year, Brandon’s “priorities changed” significantly. “It just didn’t seem important to do music anyway,” he says. “[So the material] just sat there for a second.”
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Overwhelmed with grief after his brother’s death, Brandon felt unsure about his musical future. But he started playing Cosmicide shows with some friends in New York and, in 2016, he staged a live residency at the Lower East Side club Pianos. Garza happened to be in town for one of those gigs, accompanying his wife to the city on a work trip. And that coincidence inadvertently catalyzed the next phase of Secret Machines—even if neither of them knew it at the time.
“I saw Brandon was doing a residency, and I was like, ‘Dude, fuck yeah! I’d love to see you do your thing!’” Garza says. “I got off the plane and Brandon was like, ‘You wanna [play on] a song?’ I was waiting for my luggage but was like, ‘Yeah, dude, count me in!’”
“He came onstage and did a Secret Machines song [2006’s ‘Alone, Jealous and Stoned’] with the rest of the Cosmicide band,” Brandon says. “We stayed in contact, and I sent him the music. It was very slow and organic.”
“I can’t speak for all men, but I feel like most guys don’t keep in touch 100 percent with all their friends,” Garza continues. “But we always pick up like we just left off. When I saw him, it was like we were two old war buddies hanging out again. It was a blast, but I didn’t think much of it. I certainly didn’t think, ‘Hey, let’s get the band back together.’ It was more like, ‘This was awesome. I fucking love you, man. Good luck with your thing—onward and upward.’ It wasn’t like we were reconnecting—we don’t live in the same state. But, we just hung out, got drinks, stayed up late. It’s New York City, man! It wasn’t until later when he was in [LA] that he dropped by and was like, ‘What do you think about finishing up a few songs that I’ve got?’ I think he felt a spark that I probably wasn’t privy to as much. I had a blast rekindling that chemistry we have. But I didn’t think anything would come out of it, other than just having a good time.”
He was wrong. Brandon cautiously reproached the Cosmicide material as Secret Machines, working with Garza to carve out the appropriate space for his signature, punishing drumming. They didn’t force the issue: The motivating factor, Brandon says, was stepping back and asking themselves, “Does this feel good?”
“I went out to LA for five or six days and rented a studio,” Brandon says. “I had made stems of all the tracks and figured out a way to record his drums onto the songs. This was still at a point where I didn’t know if it was going to work—we hadn’t committed to anything. There were no guarantees. But, either on ‘Talos’ Corpse’ or ‘Everything’s Under,’ his vibe just activated something. It felt immediate.”
Even if their reunion wasn’t entirely seamless, Brandon’s songs naturally lent themselves to Garza’s style. One example is the aforementioned, melancholy yet somehow hopeful single “Talos’ Corpse.” It’s one of the band’s most emotionally direct tunes— seemingly channeling the pain they were facing after Benjamin’s death. (“I want to give up/ But don’t,” the frontman sings.) And it’s built on a fidgety drum groove that carries through the entire cut.
“There are a couple of songs, ‘Talos’ Corpse’ being one of them, where I was imagining Josh’s drum sounds anyway, just because he’d been the drummer I’d played with for [so many] years,” Brandon says. “I don’t know that it required a bunch of rejiggering to make room for his style. That’s one of the things that was challenging in a weird way. I had a lot of attachment to the mixes that Benjamin and I worked on. But, it’s obviously not the same without him. His style and feel are really unique. He has this thing where he’s dragging the hi-hat, pushing the snare. The length of the transient on his kick drum—there are all these things that are so attached to his personality. I think they activated something that was in the songs and brought some other things to life. He made it a Secret Machines record.”
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This reunion came as a welcome change for Garza. He’d been working as a session drummer in LA, often contributing to records that took him “out of [his] wheelhouse,” in styles that he wasn’t entirely comfortable playing.
“Artists would be like, ‘I want this; I want that.’ And I realized I hate that,” he says. “I’m not kind of drummer who can be like, ‘I’ll do jazz now and funk now.’ I just want to do Josh. That was the beauty of Brandon’s situation. He was like: ‘Here’s the song. Here’s sort of the groove.’ It’s something most drummers wouldn’t have the ability to do. Most drummers come in, play a beat, and it’s like, ‘Thanks, bye.’ They don’t have a say in the final voicing of that sound—the drums are tweaked and edited and spliced-up and compressed. So they end up sounding completely different than what they recorded. With these sessions, it was like, ‘I’m doing Josh Garza. I play like this, and my drums sound like this.’”
After the vanished Moth LP, and with few updates in the interim, most fans had given up on hearing more Secret Machines. The duo’s friendship—now deepened after their shared loss— made it possible. But there were other roadblocks: Garza’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, and the drummer focused on his family, including their newborn daughter, during that time. (Fortunately, his wife recovered by the end of that year.)
And even after Brain Chamber was finished, they struggled to find a label who’d take on the record without a major touring commitment. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit—and, in a strange way, it leveled the playing field.
“Just for Brandon and I to jam together is a logistical nightmare,” Garza says. “Brandon lives in Vermont, I live in LA and the band we might play with lives in New York City. Just for all of us to get in the same room would be a financial nightmare. So we felt like that was keeping a lot of people from being [excited].”
“We didn’t really have a plan,” Brandon adds. “During the initial push of quarantining, I was like, ‘Let’s just put it up on Bandcamp and make it free.’ That led to other conversations. We started organizing, making some vinyl, and it became what it is now. Usually, if you do an album and want some attention, you need to play shows—all these plates need to spin at the exact same time. Taking the live element off the table was a little bit of a relief for us.”
Another source of relief was the warm reception to Brain Chamber. (“People didn’t hate it!” Garza says with a laugh.) They were so motivated that they quickly dusted off the unfinished Moth tracks, which Brandon has already remixed for a near-future release. Garza is excited that the album marks a musical 180 from Awake in the Brain Chamber, with “long-winded” tracks that draw on influences like Can, Brian Eno and Talk Talk.
“This album was really fucking weird,” the drummer admits. “I’ve been listening to it over the last 10 years. I’ve always liked it. It’s going to be the complete opposite of Awake.”
Garza says that finishing Awake in the Brain Chamber helped give Brandon the confidence to tackle the long-dormant project. And part of that process involved honoring Benjamin in recorded form. The drummer looks back on his former bandmate, “the young one” of the bunch, as a “really talented dude.” After the guitarist’s death, they’ve been able to funnel their mutual sadness into something productive.
Benjamin’s guitar appears on “Everything Starts,” and he was also instrumental in helping Brandon arrange some of the material. He even casually mentioned joining the Cosmicide touring band—a conversation that Brandon fondly recalls now.
“He was like, ‘I want to play keyboards in your band,’ and we joked about it,” he says. “When he got sick, it was one of those things where you think, ‘Would he have actually come out on tour and played keyboards?’ I hope so. I fantasize about it. At the time, I was probably more incredulous that he would actually do it. And I also thought, ‘Why don’t you play guitar because you’re a fucking shredder?’ But it would have been amazing to have him as a bandmate again.”
“Brandon had a lot of things he was dealing with,” Garza reflects. “It was hard for me too, living in LA. There was a lot of, ‘Let’s preserve him sonically on the album—those elements that are very special.’ I feel like [his spirit] just tied it all together—that we were able to say goodbye in a sonic way.”
