In the latest issue of Spin there's a piece about Secret Machines' 2005 recording session in Marfa, where the ex-pat Dallasites set up shop after Brandon Curtis' trip way out west some six years back. (The story isn't online, sorry.) The idea was to pay homage to a town about which Brandon tells Spin, "It's so remote, but it has this energy."
But rather than merely record and perform in Marfa, the band also invited along French avant-garde director Charles de Meaux, who made an hourlong documentary titled Marfa Mystery Lights: A Concert for the UFOs, which the magazine's Whitney Joiner describes as "a spooky, ethereal testament, combining stills of the isolated landscape with studio session footage and interviews with such locals as Boyd Elder, who designed the signature album covers for the Eaglels in the '70s."
The video, which also contains footage of the band performing the track "Daddy's in the Doldrums" from last year's Ten Silver Drops, on a hill as the sun sets, premiered at London's Tate Gallery in August 2006. But so far, there have been no U.S. screenings, and none are planned. But there is talk of putting out a DVD, which would also contain the music the Machines wrote while in Marfa, some time in the first half of 2007. Till then, here's a link to the movie's opening sequence, which is also serving as a trailer. (Make sure to play it kinda loud.) It's very, yeah, spacy. --Robert Wilonsky
