In Praise Of More (Instrumental)

The fact that following the addition of electronic composer/musician Ulrich Schnauss to the lineup of shoegaze band Engineers they began to release instrumental versions of their albums alongside the original versions demonstrates the impact Schnauss had on their sound. In Praise Of More filters Engineers standard shoe gaze rock sound through Schnauss’s dreamy, intricate electronics to create a mostly mellow, dream-synth-pop-ambient-synth-gaze hybrid. By releasing a vocal-free version which integrated the textures and timbres of electronic music, they neatly created a flavour of indie-adjacent music that was accessible to those more familiar with the abstract sound palette of techno or electronica. With the vocals removed, the songs float free from context; there’s no language, no accent, no meaning to be derived from words or cadence — there’s just the soft colliding of chiming guitars with sweeping synth washes, along with the occasional shoegaze thrash-a-thon.