Secret Machines' bonkers new lighting rig

John McCain may have tried to mock Barack Obama for voting to fund a projector for a planetarium,  fund  but the New York-based space-rockers Secret Machines are firmly in the tank for light shows. The band's new self-titled album is a reverb-heavy head trip all its own, but on the band's upcoming tour they're setting their lasers to "dazzle." 

The Machines' stage setup was helmed by noted light artist and set designer Es Devlin, who had previously plotted Kanye West's stage for his "Touch the Sky" tour, Sally Potter's film version of "Carmen" and Philip Glass' opera "Orphee." As it turns out, she's a Secret Machines fan and was happy to work with the band's admittedly skimpy budget.

"I'd seen a set that she did for Wire at the Barbican, and was just like, 'Screw it, I'm going to e-mail her,'" said singer-bassist Brandon Curtis. "Rock bands are victims of their technology, and I really liked how she could re-frame to concept of a rock band."

In a statement, Devlin laid out the lighting specs as such:

The visual elements are a direct instinctive response to the qualities of the music. The band will be caught within a Naum Gabo-inspired romboid structure surfaced with gauze and punctuated with radiating tensioned cables which will catch the light in a more lyrical way than a pure saturated block of back light -- we might combine them and counterpoint them with pure blocks of back light too.

Which, in short, means it's probably going to absolutely fry your brain's pleasure centers. The band debuted the rig last night at a show at Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 club, and Curtis sees it as a final puzzle piece to the band's overarching visual aesthetic. They'd done an in-the-round tour where the audience encircled the stage, but with this tour, the band's set design will be enveloping the audience.

"I always write music that exists inside a visual context, and this imagery we've chosen is on our album cover and our website," Curtis said. "I always perform with my eyes closed imagining an image, and with this tour I can open them and it's a slap in the face, like, 'Oh, you're still here.' "

Secret Machines plays the Key Club on Oct. 30, and early pictures of the rig suggest it'll probably be one of the most immersive rock shows of the year. As for any, ahem, suggestions on ingestible enhancements before heading out? "Ha, I have my own preferences," Curtis said. "But I'd never recommend them to anyone who wasn't planning on taking them anyway."

--August Brown

Secret Machines set photo courtesy Brandon Curtis and Es Devlin