Description
Kscope: Engineers — Three Fact Fader (Audio CD)
Brand new! Factory packaged! As pictured! Buy with confidence!
Product Details:
- Product Type: Audio CD
- Brand / Label: Kscope
- Artist: Engineers
- Catalogue Number: KSCOPE118
- UPC / Barcode: 802644811826
- Release Year: 2009
- Producer: Ken Thomas and Engineers
- Genre: Rock
- Style: Dream pop, shoegaze, post-rock
Product Features
- Format: CD
- Discs: 1
- Condition: Brand new, factory sealed
- Made in the E.U.
- Manufactured by The Echo label / Snapper Music; Kscope is a Snapper label
Overview
Engineers spent four years in the wilderness before Three Fact Fader arrived in 2009. Label troubles nearly buried the record. It surfaced anyway, and it turned out to be the album that defined them.
This is dream pop with weight. The London quartet build slow — opener "Clean Coloured Wire" rises out of near-silence, layering electronic pulse against the wall of fuzzed guitar and reverb that runs through the whole record. Critics reached for the obvious touchstones: the guitar shimmer of Cocteau Twins, the warm vocal harmonies of Teenage Fanclub, the textural drift of Neu! and Harmonia. Those are reference points, not crutches. Engineers sound like themselves.
It was their first release for Kscope, the label home of Porcupine Tree and The Pineapple Thief, and the fit was immediate. Ken Thomas — known for his work with Sigur Rós and M83 — produced, and you can hear that lineage in tracks like "The Fear Has Gone." Reviewers were near-unanimous: NME gave it 8/10, the Sunday Times Culture named it album of the week.
The CD runs thirteen tracks across roughly 56 minutes. It's the full statement, clean and uncut.
Interesting Facts
- Three Fact Fader was the band's second album, following their 2005 self-titled debut, and arrived after a four-year gap caused largely by problems with their previous label.
- Opening track "Clean Coloured Wire" incorporates a sample of "Watussi" by the German krautrock group Harmonia, written by Roedelius, Moebius and Rother.
- The album was produced by Ken Thomas, whose credits include Sigur Rós, M83, and Cocteau Twins — a pedigree that shaped the record's expansive sound.
- Kscope, the label behind the release, is the same imprint that houses Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson's catalogue; Wilson himself remixed the track "Sometimes I Realise."
- Mastering was handled by John Davis at Alchemy, with mixing done largely at Miloco's Engine Room in London.
- The album drew near-universal critical praise on release, with the Sunday Times Culture section naming it album of the week.
Track Listing
- Clean Coloured Wire — 5:12
- Sometimes I Realise — 3:43
- International Dirge — 5:12
- Helped by Science — 4:22
- Brighter as We Fall — 6:05
- Hang Your Head — 4:38
- Crawl from the Wreckage — 4:53
- Three Fact Fader
- Song for Andy
- Emergency Room
- The Fear Has Gone
- Be What You Are
- What Pushed Us Together
Publishers
Released by Kscope in 2009. © 2009 The Echo label ltd., part of Chrysalis plc, under exclusive licence to Snapper Music plc. Made in the E.U. Produced by Ken Thomas and Engineers; mastered by John Davis at Alchemy.
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