Unreleased Music
What follows is a short history of what engeo got up to before their first official release.
Engeo originally consisted of a soul member, Nex. In fact, the band was originally called Nex, but he felt that he needed more musicians to help him achieve the level of composition and recording that he envisioned. Although many members came and left the band, almost none did anything productive.
Nex managed to make a three song tape and gave it to a friend. This was recorded live using a karaoke machine and is the first recording of engeo that exists. It is also the sole copy of the recording and there is no master. It was made by request for Elora Mukherjee, one of Nex's close friends at the time. The tape was titled “Themes of the Mind” and was made in 2000. It contained a version of the first three songs Nex had written called, “Wrong”, “Knowledge” and “Spirit of a Jilted Teenager”.
Due to a fairly positive feedback, Nex felt he could try something a little grander. He attempted to learn how to use his computer to do recording and produced a 10 track CD entitled “Radioedit”. Only ten CDs were ever produced, each inlay cover being drawn by Nex individually. The first ever sale was to Calum Ferguson, another one of Nex's close friends.
The CD was still very rough but a significant improvement over “Themes of the Mind”. Those who listened to it praised it for it's originality, but Nex felt the most noteworthy part of the album was that it contained and early, instrumental version of “Dreamworld”, which on the CD was called “Untitled”.
The full track listing for “Radioedit” was as follows:
- Wrong
- Knowledge (Mark II)
- Spirit of a Jilted Teenager
- Pulcher Esse
- Mind-bending
- Chickiwaka
- Headlock
- Virtuous Qualities
- Stalker
- (Untitled)
It is perhaps interesting to note that, since Nex had only a small number of songs to choose from, everything he had written at the time appeared on this CD in the order he had written it.
Over the next few months, Nex re-recorded some of the songs on the album in an attempt to make it sound more professional. However, by engeo's current recording standards, this was still terribly arranged and mastered. Nonetheless, it led to the release of a second version of “Radioedit” that had similar artwork, but was printed rather than drawn individually by hand.
Around fifty copies of the second version of “Radioedit” were sold. There were actually 16 tracks on the 'album' but only 13 were listed. The lyrics for all songs were in the inlay, except for these last three which appeared underneath the CD tray for those intrepid enough to look. The full track listing is shown below:
- Wrong
- Knowledge (Mark II)
- Spirit of a Jilted Teenager
- Pulcher Esse
- Mind-bending
- Chickiwaka
- Headlock
- Virtuous Qualities
- Stalker
- My Dreamworld
- Friendship
- Garden Of The God
- Consciousness
+ Hidden Tracks:
- The Beer Song
- The Piano Song
- The Constipation Song
This album was extremely well received considering Nex's relatively poor opinion of it. At this time, Nex wavered a lot from his music as he was struggling to achieve the professional sound he had conceived. Next wrote enough songs for a second album and made artwork for it. He titled it, “The Conformist Rebellion” in an attempt to show that he wanted to be original, but not too far from being considered professional. The songs were never recorded in anything more than rough demos. Nex refused to release the album to anyone, even friends, until he was satisfied that it was to a level that he had been seeking.
Nex went in and out of a few other bands at this time. The only significant one for this history was a Christian band called “Opposite Shore”. Nex came on as guitarist, but the pianist (and former engeo band member), Jennifer MacRitchie suggested that maybe he could compose some original songs for the band to play.
Somewhat surprised by this encouragement, Nex composed an anthem track for the band and named it after them. He also allowed the band members to listen to his demo songs for “The Conformist Rebellion” to see if there was anything they liked that could be remoulded as a song for the band. Sadly, the songs were not well received and it was a great blow for Nex at the time. Nex soon left the band when the original guitarist returned. As far as Nex is aware, the band split up a year or so later.
Nex then put his music aside for a time and began to focus on University which he had just started. It was there that he became closer friends with someone he had known from high school, Jaime. Nex and Jaime had often jammed together using the music department's guitars at the end of the high school day.
One day while having lunch in the Glasgow University Union, Jaime enquired as to what had become of Nex's band. Nex said that it had more or less died because he could never find anyone enthusiastic enough about the sound who was committed to working with him. Jaime hinted that he might be such a person and after a few months of dancing around the subject, they settled to join forces.
This was the most important moment in engeo's history as it was the time when it became a proper band and not simply a poor effort here and there from Nex. Although it took many years to produce the recordings that Nex had always dreamt of, the partnership proved extremely successful. It took Nex a while to stand down from the position of dictatorship in the band and Jaime was good enough to ignore most of the artistic tantrums that Nex threw.
The band have always concentrated more on recording that gigging, and have written a large number of songs together. However, with an increasing library of music, they can now say that some of them are awful and some have promise. But they no longer have to include songs on a release because they don't have enough to choose a better one. If they don't have a good one to choose, they wait until they have written one. Engeo make a strong attempt to include no filler in their releases. But that is often a subjective outlook.
That more or less brings the history of engeo's unreleased music up to date. We hope you have enjoyed reading the history and we apologise if it was a little dry.
The songs which are discussed here may see the light of day again, but we hope by that point people will like our music enough to say, “It's amazing how bad they were considering how amazing they are now”.