In his new project Garden Gate, Tim Meskers and his band release space baroque album Dark Harvest. It’s an intriguing concept album, based on a series of recurring dreams, journeys, channeled imagery, and a set of custom tarot cards modeled after the phases of the moon. Each of these themes were distorted and flushed together to create something dreamlike and gothic. The band states that Dark Harvest follows the journey of a young candlelit heroine as she attempts to navigate a series of endless, winding hallways and overlapping doorways inside the threshold of two simultaneous mansions.
Meskers creates his own collage art much like his music. With overlapping images and symbols, he is able to form his own thought experiment, letting the viewer grasp a mere glimpse of his inner mind. It’s lovely and mysterious, just like Garden Gate’s sound.
In their track “Moonchild,” Garden Gate manages to accomplish something only few modern bands can do successfully – create a new, beautiful melody out of a late 60s psychedelic dream. To me, this track feels quite Beatlesque, especially the Lennon-type vocals that emerge from the flute synthesizers as Meskers forms an engaging, haunting tune. I can just imagine sitting on an old couch in a friend’s basement, trying to stay off the humidity of the outside world, lounging in the evening with a smoking cigarette as this song thrums in the background. It feels enormously cool and melancholy.
Garden Gate makes it so easy to picture the Moonchild creeping through the house, wandering dreams and spiral staircases. I can’t help but want to wander at her side, her silhouette falling over my shadow as she steps before an open window of moonlight.
