Machine is the name for the gorgeously spun song-craft of Madeline Mahrie, living for music and art and fashion; crafting spinning, swooning torch anthems evoking a world of smoke-filled bourbon back rooms where souls are rolled like dice. Her collaborator is drummer Peter Thomas, which she met playing shows together. They started jamming and bonded over the music. The name Machine represents getting things done whatever it takes, against pain or bitterness of adversity, and creating beauty and strength through tests and punishment.
I am the machine resilient to the negative forces that surround me.
In the early incarnation of Machine, Mahrie would loop the piano and play drums to it by herself. The musical message always comes first. "I write from my feelings and my heart," she says. "I've felt before like I was just a vessel the songs came through. Like the song was already written out in the aether and I was the spirit able to let it flow through me." She gets so deeply into her work she can become mesmerized just by practicing scales. "I always find a chord that gets me In that moment and how I am feeling and then I sometimes write a song from it! I've always written lyrics with the synonyms and filled in lyrics that fit my mood and the rhythm of the song."
When I first heard Machine I was just a fan,
Thomas says, who came on board through the recording of the first album in the studio and then hit the road with Mahrie. "The music was soul wrenching and trance-like. The dark and heavy tones beneath Madeline's drawn-out sultry vocals pulled me close to the stage as the shock of the music hit back. Even the more pop focused dance songs held that same intensity. I remember feeling like I was experiencing something completely new and gravitating."