Engine7
1) We are Engine7. Marie-Claire sings and writes the lyrics, Alan makes the beats and bleeps.
2) We’ve been working together for six years or so, on and off. Marie-Claire lives in London and Alan is in Glasgow, so we go for quality, rather than quantity. We only perform four times a year.
3) Alan has a four hour daily commute, so most of the ‘work’ is done on trains. Sometimes it starts with a vocal, sometimes with a beat. We discuss ideas over emails and texts, we meet up whenever we can, we come up with a plan, then Marie-Claire goes away and does something completely different to what we decided, but always much better than we expected.
4) Despite being an electronic act, we’re not very proficient with the more technical aspects of setting up to perform, and we tend to prefer drinking wine to rehearsing, which leads to a certain amount of nervous energy when we’re on stage. We try to channel that energy; that’s what informs our decisions when we’re improvising. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but often the music we make in a live situation can be surprising, even for us.
5) We’ve been recording and mixing our new record recently. Actually, we’ve been at it now for six years, although we ended up dumping five years work to start again. We’ve just got one song to finish now, and maybe a little tinkering.
6) The last time we played in Edinburgh was in a basement dive bar, underneath a Chinese restaurant. The kitchen of the restaurant was directly behind the bar, so there was a lot of sizzling and banging and chefs shouting in Mandarin. The fridges were broken, so all the drinks were all warm. On the bright side, we played with a band called Mickey 9s, who are not only fine musicians, but have a strong ethic of quality patter.
8) Our plans for the future? We’re looking for the right record label. We don’t perform much, but when we do, we try to make sure it’s special. We’re always on the look out for interesting venues or situations to play in.
9) Alan will definitely vote for an independent Scotland. The very fact that Cameron and the Tories don’t want it is good enough for him. Marie-Claire isn’t eligible to vote for now, as she doesn’t live in Scotland.
