Mark Peters was the songwriter in the acclaimed shoegaze band Engineers who released four albums on the Echo label and Kscope between 2005 and 2014; he has also collaborated with a number of other artists, including two albums on Bureau B with German electronica legend Ulrich Schnauss.the morning.
In 2018 he released his first solo album, ‘Innerland’ on Sonic Cathedral. It was one of last year’s most surprising sleeper successes. An intentionally low-key album of windswept instrumentals inspired by Mark’s move back to his native northwest, it gave musical nods to Eno, Talk Talk, Vini Reilly and Richard Thompson, and first appeared as a limited-edition cassette before being expanded to a full vinyl, CD and digital release last April. Something about its beautiful simplicity struck a chord and slowly but surely – thanks to word of mouth, as well as the support of the likes of Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 6 Music and positive reviews everywhere from Uncut to The Times – it worked its way into people’s hearts.
By the end of the year it had also worked its way into Rough Trade’s top 10 albums of 2018 and, to celebrate, another limited edition vinyl only version called ‘Ambient Innerland’ was released, an even more introspective iteration that stripped away all of the percussion. He recently followed this with a third (and final) version called ‘New Routes out of Innerland’.
It finds Mark looking outwards, away from the bleak, post-industrial landscapes of Wigan, and inviting eight different artists from around the world to interpret and translate the instrumentals of ‘Innerland’ into their own musical and geographical languages.