“It’s a little bit suspect with it (Shoegaze) coming into mainstream indie now, it looks like it might be the next thing to be mined. Then obviously there’s going be a backlash and then everyone’s going to be sneering at it again. Its like it’s cool and worthy to be a stripped down punk band but if you admit you’ve got a lot of a lot of effects pedals then you’re hiding behind it. But then I think those people don’t like their own company and just like not talking for five minutes.” Engineers bassist/vocalist Mark Peters giving his perspective on a totally different music scene from the one his band left four years ago. With all the talk of a rise in nu-gaze and rapturously received albums from M83, Maps and Kyte, along with the rise in labels like the Sonic Cathedral and Northern star and the sell out return of My Bloody Valentine there’s confirmation that excelling in sonically adventurousness is in fact something that should be applauded, not derided. Unfortunately the phrase took on a derogatory meaning during its blossoming in the early 90s, slung at anyone wielding a guitar and hiding behind a wall of sound, with long greasy hair and a lumberjack shirt on their back, but was Shoegaze as easy to pigeonhole as the mainstream music made out? Or was there something more nuanced beneath the tides in this ocean of noise: ’Something that interested me that at the time was only the press coined the term (Shoegaze) and labelled a lot of the crapper bands that came out at the time with it.’ Continues Mark ‘The ones that were just taking on the sounds of bigger acts like My Bloody Valentine or Ride when those bands were at their peak. But at the time there wasn’t really much difference between the Stone Roses, ‘Screamdaelic’ by Primal Scream and Spiritualized it was all just kind of epic, hedonistic kind of music.‘ It shouldn’t be forgotten that way back in 2005 the Engineers debut offered up an intimate record that bore its way into people’s subconsciousness, followed by a series of standout shows that saw them leading a the first wave of new acts that skilfully blurred the lines between dream pop, post rock and Shoegaze. Indeed Mark doesn’t feel that ‘shoegaze’ is a dirty word anymore. It’s been embraced by a new generation of underground bands from the sighing dream pop of Kyte to the MBV flecked indie fuzz of The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, but Mark thinks his band steps out of any crude boxes through the force and intricacy of their work, contacting the listener on different levels: ‘I think its become an accepted genre there’s a big community of people who love that music and don’t care what the mainstream press say about it, or what trendy bands want to do.’ Mark points out ‘I’m not going to be so naive to think they we won’t be pigeon holed because I know that we already are but I think there’s a lot more to us. I think if you actually listen to us opposed to just skimming through it. ‘ He’s right to be confident, returning with their startlingly new lush and swirling LP ‘Three Fact Fader’ - brought into creation via a labour of love that spun together writing, recording and production sessions over a four year period into an elegiac, multi-layered piece of work. But that’s not to say it’s birth was anything like easy. There was a danger at one point that the record that could never seen the light of day: 'We started writing this album in 2005, since the first one came out, we finished recording it in 2007. But our record company (Echo part of Chrysalis) just stopped releasing records in the traditional way.’ Mark recalls ‘We'd had quite a long intensive period of writing and recording, so opposed to sitting around waiting we thought we'd take a break. A couple of labels approached us but we didn't think it was moving on in the right way so we thought we'd wait until the right label (Kscope) to come along.' In the intervening period the band (full line up: Simon Phipps, Mark Peters, Dan MacBean, Andrew Sweeney), released