Interview with Alex Wheatley by Paul Wade
Firstly congratulations on the album, it's been out for just over a year now. What have been some of your highlights of its first year on earth?
We put so much of ourselves into the record, so it's validating that it has connected with anybody else. When you are chatting to people at shows and they hit you with an "Oh man, this bass line…" or a "I loved the album…" or a "This part really moved me…". Those interactions really mean the world.
What were your aims as a band going in to record this album? And where and who did you record it with?
We recorded with Tom Hill at the Bookhouse in London, who was recommended by a friend. I feel like Indifferent Engine are a very "live" band, and we wanted to find somebody who knew how to capture that. I really liked Tom's work on The Horrible and The Miserable by Death Goals. It's raw and fast and emotional, covered in smudges and little imperfections. It really captured the energy of their live shows. That's really how we wanted from SpecFic.
There is much going on in these songs in terms of instrumentation, textures etc. How does an Indifferent Engine song come together? What usually comes first: a riff, a rhythm, a mood, a lyric, or something else entirely?
Adam tends to work lyrics first - lyrics determine a vibe, the vibe helps direct the music. 'Pylon Cult' was based on an article about lunar rovers, but it had a real out-of-body melancholy to it. Within an hour of sending the first set of lyrics over, Adam had sent back the bass line. Everything just came together from there.
You've described the band as having evolved from Adam's songs into an actual collective. At what point did you realise that Indifferent Engine had stopped being a vehicle for one person's ideas and had developed its own personality? And was there a song where that change became obvious?
'Bitcrush' was the first song that really felt collaborative. It developed from an interlude we used to play live, but it kept evolving in the practise room as everyone brought their own flair. The heavily chorused bass, the off-time drum fills, the monologue... It reached the point where it had started feeling like it was becoming a real song rather than a bit of live filler, so we just leaned hard into it. We have been trying to write more like this now we have a permanent studio space. We tend to warm-up with a bit of a jam, so it's great to be able to capture the spontaneity to work on later.
I thought it was interesting that you deliberately took time away from playing live because the shows had become so intense, but then you went into the studio wanting to capture the feeling of playing live. How do you recreate something chaotic without losing the spontaneity that made it chaotic in the first place?
The physicality you get from volume is one of the reasons I love live music. It's caveman brain stuff - it's exciting to play your instrument really loud with loads of gain and feedback standing opposite a drummer that's beating the shit out of his kit. You play harder and everything feels more alive. You can't really replicate that when you've got headphones on. Tom Hill really understood that was what we wanted to achieve, and did an amazing job capturing that physicality. We recorded as much of the album as we could live, all together in the room, and without a click or guide tracks.
The song "Crashing Into A Hillside in the Dead of Night" is about people knowing something is going wrong but being unable to say, "We need to act now." Does that idea have any relevance outside the literal story of the song — perhaps to the way people behave in relationships, society, politics, or even the way we respond to technology? AI is a fine example.
I have always interpreted 'Crashing…' as "Are you happy here? Is this what you really want? Are you willing to do anything to make it better?" It's an introspective interpretation for sure. I don't think I would discourage a more noble interpretation to act, though. The world is looking pretty scary right now, and maybe people should be willing to make things a little better. "Is this the hill to die on?"
Your live show has become like an art installation in its own right with the stage filled with old TV's. This kind of dedication and excess really sets you apart from other bands in the genre in an unexpected way. But this unpredictability is also there in the music, this album is as pretty and ambient as it is heavy. Is avoiding the obvious and striving for more something you consciously work at as a band?
We think of ourselves as a verse-chorus-verse punk band, but hiding under the artifice of stupid time signatures and big dynamic shifts. We want to write songs that take a little journey, so we use the quieter moments as part of the narrative. We try to avoid the cliches - maybe to a detriment. We certainly have a habit of over-complicating parts. At one point, the rhythm section of Crashing… was in something silly like 13/8, syncopated under a 4/4 guitar part. It sounded reasonably cool, but it felt difficult for the sake of being difficult. We tried the rhythm in 4/4, and it all just clicked. The hook felt better, it had more energy, you could actually bang your head to it… Simplifying it definitely saved the song from the bin.
I read that you describe the band as not comfortably fitting into any particular scene. Is that something you're proud of, something that's made things more difficult for you, or a bit of both?
We definitely struggled a bit in the early days to find promoters that really understood what we were about. They didn't always get the performance art aspect of it, or how loud we play. We played to a lot of scared indie kids and confused metalheads. Now, I think promoters have a better understanding of who we are and how to pitch us, and we've played some amazing lineups as a result. The UK post- and hardcore scene is pretty beautiful. It's full of immensely talented, kind-hearted bands, playing far more difficult music than we are. I'd like to think we are finally weaseling our way in with them.
You've talked about taking a "brute force approach" to being in a band and having as many different creative strings to your bow as possible, from the album and live show to guitar pedals and even a game. Do you see Indifferent Engine ultimately as just a band, or as a much bigger creative project that happens to have a band at its centre?
I think we are just a band with too many cool ideas and the inability to say "no" to them. We just want to make cool things. Whether that's new music or pedals or new stage props, we just want to do something that is exciting to us. Sometimes we post about "the cool thing", and can trick people into listening to our music - that's a bonus, more than the goal.
What is the current scene like in Cambridge and are there any local bands you could recommend that we might not already know?
Despite being a "Cambridge" band, North Herts really is our local scene. The Club 85 team in Hitchin have been extremely generous to us over the years. We've got a really good local scene of promoters who are willing to give younger bands the opportunity to play a venue with a big stage. I think that's helping keep the scene pretty vibrant - it's not just the same parade of cover acts. I absolutely love Estranger. They are playing mathy, proggy hardcore - a consistently surprising and exciting band. They self-released Aether Nether in July 2025, and I won't stop recommending it until it gets its flowers.
And finally what is the rest of the year looking like for the band?
We did a lot of work on a follow-up to SpecFic in the first half of the year, but we haven't had much time over the summer. We'd like to get some new tunes ready for the remaining shows this year. We are joining the Hockney Hustle at Billy Bootleggers in Nottingham, 25 Oct 2026. Buttonpusher has curated a stage of post- and math- adjacent bands - they always do excellent work. (As of writing it isn't announced, but) we are joining an excellent screamo line-up in London just before Christmas - that should be a nice way to see out the year.
