Engine7 is Alan McNeill: songwriter, musician, and producer.
Alan makes emotional, organic music influenced by everything that makes him feel human, good or bad. The sounds swell like nature, brutal and beautiful, treading the line between paranoia and peace.
Listening to Engine7 is like being on a train in a storm, heading home. Eventually we'll get there, we always do.
'Hope Street' is in Glasgow. It's the most polluted street in Europe. Busses, beggars, blood. No hope here.
The cover art of 'Hope Street' shows the weather turning - but are the rainclouds forming or dispersing? We look into the sun, aspiring to be free, but it's painful. What are we hoping for anyway? A better life? Calm? Oblivion? We're knocked around by our daily life - does that change what we hope for? Does our hope become naivety? On one hand we have hope, a fantasy of a less painful life, on the other hand we have the grit, dirt, dust and grime of reality.
'Hope Street', as a whole, is about the balance.