Mark Peters - It strikes me in how zen it is by Revista The 13th

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NÚMERO 16

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[ Interview with Mark Peters from Engineers by Diego Centuri贸n ] [ Translation: Marcelo Simonetti and Bernardo Jimenez Mesa ]

IT STRIKES ME IN HOW ZEN IT IS

This month marks the tenth anniversary edition of the first album of Engineers. We talked with Mark Peters, singer, guitarist and songwriter for the band, who refreshes his memory in this exclusive interview for the magazine.

From a current perspective, ten years after its release, what feelings generate it to you today? First and foremost, I’m proud of the album. I think the songwriting standard is quite high and, despite being quite serious about what we wanted to achieve, we had a lot of fun. We learned a lot about production through trial and error and basically just doing it ourselves. Ninety per cent of the lyrics are about the passing of time, so some lines take on a certain resonance or a different meaning that we couldn’t have foreseen at the time. It’s also a shame that we didn’t manage to carry on making records together. What do you remember about the recording process? I always feel like the recording of it was split up into two halves. Before signing with Echo, we recorded the bulk of ‘Home’, ‘How Do You Say Goodbye’, and ’New Horizons’, and wrote ‘Come In Out Of The Rain’ and ‘Forgiveness’ at a house in London that I shared with our manager, Simon White. Dan MacBean came to the house virtually every day, and Sweeney and Simon Phipps would often stay for a few days at a time. I have incredibly fond memories of that time – I remember laughing a lot and we did a lot of writing that didn’t make it onto any records. We just wanted to write truly great songs and had no agenda other than to avoid being on the dole. The second phase came after we signed with the Echo Label in 2003. We moved to a small and claustrophobic studio space in King’s Cross; there were no windows, and it was quite an unhealthy environment due to the amount of smoking. In 2004, we did a lot of touring, which meant that the recording process became quite truncated, though we relished the changes in environment. We spent time with Tim Holmes from Death In Vegas to record ‘Waved On’; the version of ‘Forgiveness’ that appears on ‘Folly’, plus an early version of ‘Thrasher’. We also worked with Bacon and Quarmby to record the album versions of ‘Home’ and ‘Forgiveness’. Recording a string quartet in RAK studios for those two tracks rates as one of one of my favourite experiences, especially for ‘Home’, which I’d written and first recor-

ded a basic demo of around three years earlier, so it was absolutely amazing to hear the London Session Orchestra playing on it. If you have to express the album atmosphere, what could you say? Primarily, I think it’s elegiac. I feel like the realisation had dawned that, in life, we have to come to terms with the fact that we often have to settle for less than we’d hoped for. We were all around 30 at that time and had already ‘been around’ the music business quite a bit. The reason that I think this is album is special is because that realisation is juxtaposed with a celebration and investigation of the physicality of music and sound. We would only feel like a track was progressing correctly when it took on a 3D effect – almost like it existed in front and behind the speakers, or if it seemed to have height, width and an almost architectural value. For me, the album is a strong sound search of the band, although the sound has a lot of dream pop, I can perceive differences between songs. Were the songs written for this album or coming from before? I wrote ‘Home’ in 2001 and ‘How Do You Say Goodbye’ and ‘Let’s Just see’ about a year later. Dan, Sweeney and I shared a flat in Manchester, and whilst Dan toured with his band The Shining, the remaining two of us worked on demos. ‘Said And Done’ was started in the 90s at Dan’s parents’ house, written around a manipulated string loop, and it was finally finished in 2004. Sweeney and Dan wrote ‘One In Seven’ and ‘A Given Right’ from the Folly EP at Simon’s flat in December 2003. Aside from these, the other tracks were written in Camden in 2004 (apart from ‘Peter Street’, which I wrote and recorded in Camden just prior to the band starting). Engineers’ sound is characterized by that beautiful bright sound, which is something like the image of a sunrise, that moment where the celestial of the new day and the blue of the outgoing night coexist. In a way, did you try to create a hypnotic effect, similar to

a landscape maybe? We grew up in suburban, semi-rural Lancashire surrounded by motorways and former mining land and, although that contributes to our characters, I don’t think that we were massively inspired by local landscapes. Cities were much more exciting and influential to us at that time. I first began to produce on a computer in my flat in Manchester, and I wrote a lot of electronic music besides the Engineers songs. Dan listened to some of the tracks we’d written during his travels and he developed ideas about production through his experiences of European culture and architecture. I would like you to give me your opinion, "Track by Track" of each song this album. Home Many I’m sure will agree, that this is the archetypal Engineers song and I still feel its influence on my life. Everyone involved felt that it was a special song and, to a degree, it set the bar in terms of writing the rest of the album. It’s quite a weird track harmonically – it feels quite bright and optimistic, but there are some quite dark bass inversions underneath the chords. I’m still very proud of it. Waved On We had fun making the instrumental track with Tim Holmes, but the vocal didn’t come easily so we re-recorded it once we got back to our studio. It has nice melodies but the lyrics don’t resonate with me in the same way as other tracks. New Horizons I think this is a good track. We enjoyed making the basic recording for this in 2khz Studio in Willesden Green, London. We used a Yamaha CP70B piano and I remember having fun with a vintage tape echo unit called a Watkins Copycat, and I think those sounds enhance the dark feeling in the chords. Sweeney wrote the words and I think there is something very heartfelt and enigmatic about them, matched by Simon’s delivery.

Forgiveness Simon didn’t write a great deal for Engineers and this is his major contribution, completed by Sweeney with a verse melody and lyric. We’d always intended it to be a single, so recorded a few different versions. By the time the RAK recording happened, I was tired of it and didn’t attend, choosing instead to assist Dave Bascombe with mixing ‘Let’s Just See’. In retrospect, I am very fond of it and feel like the album version is the definitive one. Let's Just See This is one of my favourites on the record. It’s a bit of a hotchpotch production-wise, with much of it being made up from the demo Sweeney and I made in Manchester, but I like it musically because it has a very futuristic and ambivalent feeling (characterized by Sweeney’s chorus refrain). Having written the lyrics for the verse, I still connect quite strongly with them whenever I hear it. The end part was initially the main part of the song until I reversed the bass line and got the idea for the vocal melody. Come in Out of the Rain This always makes me think of a predicament I was in. That inspired Sweeney to write the lyrics, so a sense of dread always ensues whenever I hear it. It has good melodies, but I just feel that we should have produced it with a touch more bite, or included the varisped radio edit version on the album instead. It sounds a touch too laid back. Alan Moulder did a different and improved mix, and we re-recorded the vocals. Peter Street It was Dan’s idea to include this on the album, although I made it in an afternoon using Software synths. It has an interesting feeling. Said and Done I feel that this is one of the best tracks on the album. It happened very naturally and I remember being quite moved when I first heard Sweeney’s melody. Simon sang them beautifully and I’m sure we all felt

end. I’m glad we didn’t make an entire record in that way, but I feel we captured our live sound well on this track. Incidentally, we used to open with it at gigs and it would be enormous. Simon once compared it to an aircraft taking off.

proud of it at the time and continue to do so. Thrasher I think this is a good recording of an okay song, but certainly not one of my favourites on the album. We felt like we had too many mellow songs and needed something more upbeat to balance out the live show. It didn’t stay in the set that long, if I remember correctly. I most like the instrumental middle section, which has a recording of me kicking an amp with the reverb turned up full, but as with Come In Out Of The Rain it could have done with ‘rocking’ a bit more. How Do You Say Goodbye? I like this a lot. It has very emotional lyrics, which even now are very evocative to me, and I remember having a lot of fun experimenting on the production with Dan. Looking back, we had remarkably archaic and naive ways of doing things, but it all seemed to make perfect sense at the time. One in Seven I think this is another Engineers classic and it’s one of my favourites from the album. As well as being a great song, it reminds me of the years before the band was signed when we would jam for hours on

I am of the idea that an artist in the studio, with technical possibilities, experiments a lot, and the album ends when the artist "abandons" experimentation. Did you experiment in the studio? And when did you decide to stop experimenting with different possibilities? We did experiment a lot, but only in terms of trying to find sounds that weren’t generic or would date the songs. At that time, the trend was for stripped down punk-style recordings like The Strokes, meaning that certain parties encouraged us to fall in line with that ethos. I’m glad we didn’t though. Careerwise it might not have been the greatest decision, but I guess I wouldn’t be writing this if One In Seven had no delay and reverb on it! Last one about this album. What sensation do you have at hearing again this album in its entirely? I just listened to it again and it strikes me in how Zen it is. We certainly weren’t like that as people in 2004, especially when touring and pressure to compete in the industry started. Many albums are relaxing but I’d be surprised to hear if there was another like it that also had such a turbulent genesis. I do love it though, and I’m proud of how strongly we felt about making the album we wanted to make. In 2014 "Always Returning" was released. How was this great work? Always Returning was never intended to be an album as such, but simply a collection of songs that I’d been working on whilst recording the two albums with Ulrich Schnauss (‘Underrated Silence’ and ‘Tomorrow Is Another Day’). It started to take shape after I gave two songs to Matthew Linley to work on. He made changes that linked them well with other songs I was further down the road with. Upon hea-

ring them, I immediately felt like this was an album with an identity. Once I showed the tracks to Kscope, they were quite keen for me to finish it quickly, so at the beginning of 2014 I worked every day solidly for two months to get all the recording and mixes finished. I then went to stay with Ulrich and we worked on his synth parts over the course of a week. In retrospect, it was interesting to have worked on some aspects of the album for years whereas others came together in a couple of hours. But this added a welcome sense of spontaneity and, because Ulrich is a true pro, I don’t think anything he added was less than brilliant. A friend gave me the album title (it’s in the lyrics of the title track) and I think that it suits the album very well. The spirit of the album returns to the place we were in when we recorded ‘Engineers’. The production values have been updated but it tips the hat to the ethos and feeling of the debut.

How is the band at the moment? Have you got plans for 2015? Are you planning a new album? At the moment, I’m mixing an album that I’ve made with Elliot Ireland for his label, Pedigree Cuts. We produced and recorded it together, and there are many parallels with Engineers’ material because the project is biased towards songs I’ve written. Sophie McDonnell, who sang on ‘Always Returning’, is also on this album, and it features my guitar playing perhaps more heavily than on any other release, so there will be a strong element of familiarity for fans of the band. Later on in the year I hope to complete a new Engineers EP. Thank you very much for answering the questions.

Diego

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