Album Club Week 73 25/12/2012: Engineers - Engineers (2005)

[RichB]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61Y3GGVGTHL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Best Wishes of the season to you all.... I hope you weren't expecting too much in the way of festive fun for this week's album club as thats not really my bag. What I can do though is hopefully introduce you to one of the best young British bands I've discovered in a long time... their sound is as fitting to our long wintry days as it is to a hazy summer afternoon.

I first came across Engineers by chance when browsing an Edinburgh record shop in 2005, I saw the album cover (above) and figured it would be worth a punt as this was in the 'indie/alternative' section. It was a nice summers day and I put this on in the car as Mrs B and I took the long way home driving down the coast in beautiful weather. The easy flowing and laid back sound washed over us and we instantly fell in love with this album. Unfortunately the band never achieved major commercial success and it would be a further five years until I would get to see one of their infrequent live performances. The band has continued to record and their subsequent releases are all worth a listen too if you enjoy this.

Some may describe this sound as 'Shoegaze', a slow and trancey take on indie music...To me it isnt so easily pigeonholed, the band cite their influences as Pink Floyd, Brian Eno, My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized and I think there are many prog elements to this, when combined with tender songwriting and a light hand on the production console makes for a most underrated and quite beautiful album. Stand out tracks for me are 'waved on', 'lets just see' and 'new horizons'.

Some blurb about the band here from the wiki place:

Engineers are a British shoegazing/dream pop band. The band was formed in London in 2003 by singer/guitarist Simon Phipps, bassist/guitarist/keyboardist Mark Peters, bassist/guitarist Dan MacBean, and drummer Andrew Sweeney. After the release of their second album Three Fact Fader in 2009, MacBean and Sweeney left the band, and were replaced by Ulrich Schnauss, bassist Daniel Land, and drummer Matthew Linley. Engineers' sound has been described as "hazy, ethereal, and atmospheric,"[1] and the band often cites the works of Brian Eno, Cocteau Twins, Spiritualized, and Pink Floyd as influences.[1][2]

No spotify links for the album I'm afraid but I've managed to find it on grooveshark and bits on youtube and around the web, i'd say if you enjoy it go and pick up a copy and show these guys that their work is appreciated.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Engineers/221250

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Rich

[Tim]

This will be interesting Richard as I have caught them live twice, but didn't really think that much of them TBH. In fairness to them they were support acts on both occasions, so I'm intrigued to see what a studio album will be like ;)

(so glad it wasn't a Christmas album too :D)

[sparrow]

I have their last two albums but not this one....need to speak to the missus about yet another order at Amazon.

[Bazil]

New to me, I shall groove with the shark :)

[Alex_UK]

Thanks for posting before I'd even reminded you, Rich! New to me - looking forward to giving it a try. :)

[RichB]

Thanks for posting before I'd even reminded you, Rich! New to me - looking forward to giving it a try. :)

Cheers, I thought I'd best do it before the drinking and festivities started. Apologies for being a day early.

[Bazil]

Define shoe gazing music please :scratch:

[RichB]

Define shoe gazing music please :scratch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoegazing is a pretty good description of the genre but I feel there is more to this band than this label.

[Pete The Cat]

I got the "Folly" mini-album that preceded this. "Come In Out Of The Rain", which is on both, is magnificent, but also so good that it towers over the others on that disc. I must give them another rinse tomorrow morning to usher in the first morning of the new year. Fine choice.

Pete

[MartinT]

the band often cites the works of Brian Eno, Cocteau Twins, Spiritualized, and Pink Floyd as influences

I like all of those and I can hear the influences at work. This is unexpectedly good, thanks for introducing it to us.

<counts> 9/10.

[DSJR]

I'm a huge Ulrich Schnauss fan, and this now old thread sort of links the two. I bought this on CD last week for under £2 on Amazon UK and love the basic vibe of the music, but the production seriously lets it down for me. The mean level seems high (loudness wars era?) and the copious amounts of compression in the mix tend to make the music all too samey and bland - a bit like BBC Radio 2 with bass - if you're not really in the mood for the basically great music on offer. I think Herr Schnauss has brought some of his beautiful reverberant soundcapes to the band now and I look forward to trying the later discs from this band :)