Album: School Of Emotional Engineering - School Of Emotional Engineering

Band: School Of Emotional Engineering
Album: School Of Emotional Engineering
Label: Architecture
Year: 2004







Tracklist
01. To Be Continued
02. Refrain
03. Falling For Sylvia
04. Redline
05. Of Angel Dust
06. Refrain (Bloodline)
07. She Dreams In Car Crashes
08. Slicing The Skin Between My Toes
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Due to lack of any music that impressed me this week, I thought it was a good opportunity to post an older album by School Of Emotional Engineering, which in fact is the inspiration of our blog's name, which the band inspired from a single line in Aldous Huxley’s prophetic social critique Brave New World.

School Of Emotional Engineering is a loosely defined ‘band’, more of a ‘project’ created by composer Ben Frost. Primarily Frost, alongside multi-instrumentalist and engineer Daniel Rejmer, bassist and guitarist Andy Hazel, violin player Russell Fawkus and drummer Jova Albers, School Of Emotional Engineering began originally in Melbourne, Australia as a live extension of Frost’s solo work.

School Of Emotional Engineering have performed live rarely, with as many as eight people on stage recreating the impenetrable wall of emotive sound found on the self-titled 2004 debut. All members of School Of Emotional Engineering have various side projects and either collectively or individually work in production roles (remixing, programming, etc.) for other artists including Björk.

The Music:
Reviews often describe School of Emotional Engineering as ambient or atmospheric, trip-hop, industrial and post-rock. Their debut album is often compared to the work of artists such as Icelandic band Sigur Rós or Canadian post-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor. There is mostly a foreboding and visceral undercurrent that threatens to devour the subtle textures and somnolent ambiance in the music of School Of Emotional Engineering, which intermittently erupts in the form of tensely cut-up beats, abrasive snares and blasts of static interference. The cinematic identity of School Of Emotional Engineering is forged with sonorous nuances, droning basslines and live drums. Their debut album is essentially devoid of traditional song structures; instead, idle piano motifs, lush walls of guitar and inert soundscapes articulate the album’s emotional weight.

Db Magazine described School Of Emotional Engineering’s debut as “an atmospheric masterpiece”. However, in the media Frost has often suggested that most people seemed to have missed the point when comparing School Of Emotional Engineering to these bands, explaining that the output may be presented in such a way which is beyond the control of the artist at the point of release and the points of inspiration and preferred ‘genre alignment’ are convoluted.

Inpress Magazine described the album as “a slow-moving twilight journey through a gaunt and desolate landscape” and compared School Of Emotional Engineering to artists such as DJ Shadow (pointing specifically to the slower, darker, less funk-influenced album Endtroducing), Ulver, and even Black Sabbath. This particular review closes with the line: “School of Emotional Engineering is like getting stoned and floating face down in a swimming pool on a cold night, with steam rising the water and shafts of florescent light twinkling in your unblinking eyes. Bliss.”

Future:
Progressing beyond their first album the material leaking onto the internet from various works for film or compilations and undoubtedly what will be their forthcoming second album has, it seems, grown progressively more violent and arguably highlights the influence of their originally self-appointed peers Swans, Ulver and various underground black metal bands and even industrial artists such as Scorn, Coil and Nine Inch Nails. -last.fm

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