Future Engineers

Future Engineers Lee Batchelor and Keir Cleminson have known each other from a very early age (pre school!). Both grew up in North London, and thanks to their fathers working in the music industry, both were constantly surrounded by music, whether it be a live concert or in a recording studio. This exposure caused a spark of interest and it became inevitable that they would become involved in that kind of environment. In 1990 Keir moved to Glasgow to be joined later in 1994 by Lee who brought with him the basis of a home studio that he had been slowly building in London with the help of his father. It was here that Lee and Keir attended a college course in sound and video recording.

They had both grown up listening to London pirate radio stations so they had followed the progression from the early Hardcore through to Hardcore Techno, Jungle Techno, Jungle and then Drum and Bass, but it wasn't until they heard Bukem's first Radio One essential mix that they decided to introduce more music in to their production. "We had always bought records and Deejayed but until then we hadn't really heard anything like that, especially not mixed in that way. The only tunes we could get our hands on were dark or ragga influenced so it was a big change in direction for us." "It took us a good few years of being locked in the studio before we could produce anything that we felt was presentable enough as a demo, even though we had done loads of tracks, I guess we were just too fussy and self-critical". "We had just recently hooked up with another Glasgow based Drum and Bass producer KMC, as we had asked him to play at a night we were organising in Glasgow. At this time he was playing down at speed along with DJ Lee and so we let him hear a tape with 'The Silence' on it, he gave us a lot of positive feedback which helped and encouraged us to keep going."

It wasn't until 1996/97 that they relinquished their first d.a.t., and it was to the man himself, the influential LTJ Bukem. They were doing the warm up set for him at a gig in Glasgow and thought that there was no better time or person to give it to. Having heard the d.a.t., he cut 'The Silence' and started playing it out (as did PHD). This gave the Future Engineers the confidence to write more tunes of a similar style and send them out to the various labels that were releasing the more musical style of Drum and Bass. Although they had made contact with people like DJ Lee at Timeless, Simon Colebrooke at Moving Shadow/Partisan, it wasn't until Clayton from Renegade Recordings heard 'Shattered' that they got their first release along with 'The Silence' in November 1997.

At that point they started traveling down to London to Logical Progression nights at clubs like Turnmills and Ministry of Sound to check out what kind of tunes were going down, and it wasn't until they first heard Blame play at Turnmills that they really opened their ears to the potential of the music. Blame was playing tunes like Odyssey -'Expressions'/'Ritual', Blu Mar Ten - 'Osaka', KMC -'Orbiting Probes' and his own, 'Centuries' / 'Visions of Mars', plus the recently finished 'Life Support', (which was subsequently signed to Partisan and remixed by Neil Trix at his request). "It was hearing the kind of stuff Blame was making and playing that really inspired us to develop the sound that we had been touching on. After several releases we were getting a bit bored of playing it safe all the time, so we started to mess around with different types of bass sounds and continued to use harder beats than were usually found in atmospheric Drum and Bass." Out of this experimentation came the resulting 12" for Partisan 'Closed Circuit' /'Tsunamis' which was a lot harder compared to their earlier material but yet still retained that warm futuristic musicality that was becoming a part of their sound.

"As we were starting to Deejay a lot more we started to write tracks that we felt would really drop in a club. We still listen too, and admire, producers from other sides of the scene, people like Photek, Optical and Ed Rush, Matrix, Teebee and Konflict and more recently artists like Marcus Intalex, Pendulum, Calibre. This helps us to keep an open mind about what we choose to incorporate into one of our own music, I suppose that we are striving to attain the best of both worlds!"

"This approach lead to releases on Blames 720 label, 'Changes in State'/'Rogue Comet' - 'Momentum'/'Organism', Technetium EP on Good Looking Records as well as Echo-Location and a remix of Pariahs Midnight. These tunes were the results of long days in the studio trying to push the limits of the sound and develop a more off the wall style. We wanted something that would really stand out from the rest in a set but be evident that we were at the controls."

"As far as production goes, we like to be perfectionists; this is something that has grown with experience. We like everything to be neat, tidy and clean! We know a lot of producers feel the complete opposite, one of which is Moby who was quoted saying 'Life is messy and there's no reason why recordings shouldn't be - you can hear the human element there!' We prefer our music to be as pristine and sterile as possible. It's just the way that we feel the music should be perceived. The concept being, that you don't even notice the production because everything gels so well and effortlessly!"

"After having a break from the scene, we're hoping to pick up from where we left off and continue to produce music that inspires us as well as other people, like the kind of stuff we heard when we were just starting out and looking for a direction to take the music."