The Machine in the Garden: Asphodel (CD)

Middle Pillar proudly presents an album of diverse beauty and transcendence: Asphodel by the Machine in the Garden is the band’s fourth full-length release revealing their richest and most compelling work. Creating a powerful yet delicate mix of darkwave influences and ethereal melodies, the duo of Roger Frace and Summer Bowman invoke soaring guitars, tribal rhythms and electronic sweeps. Entwined with her majestic and evocative vocals, Summer’s words and delivery underlie their music’s unique emotional core. Like the flower of the album’s namesake, Asphodel unfolds layers of the band’s vision, relating songs of love and desire, sorrow and despair, always searching for the quiet beauty underneath the darkness that strengthen the roots of the soul.

Roger and Summer’s music flows effortlessly from the club friendly dance tracks like “Wonderland” and “Seek” to the bittersweet melancholy of “Dawn” and “One”. The album ends with a stirring version of Depeche Mode’s “Photographic”, re-imagined in their idiom. Asphodel is an album that grows from multiple listens, where the petals are many and outstretched to the sky.

“With an impeccable grace, they have successfully pulled off the most difficult task any band can strive to attain: all their songs do not sound the same, yet they all sound fantastic.” – Outburn Magazine

“…music that spans the Gothic genre, but also moves beyond it.” – Sordid Magazine

“There’s so much talent in the songs I’ve heard by tMitG it’s clear they’re excellence personified.” – Mick Mercer

“..the band has advanced beyond darkwave into some captivating new alms” – The Sentimentalist Magazine

“TMITG delivers a beautiful and unearthly mixture of electronic and acoustic songs.” – Dark Realms Magazine

“This duo is surely among the elite of darkwave/goth and continues to surprise with their creative force…hardly anyone from the symphonic ethereal scene can ignore this band now.” – Edge of Time Magazine

“the Machine in the Garden are the only band I‚ve heard where I can fully appreciate their dark, gothic aesthetic. Summer Bowman‚s vocals are richly melodic and undeniably beautiful ˜ she could be singing from lengthy pages of monotonous U.S. legislature in verse and it would still sound great. ” – Side-Line Magazine