As someone who loves music, but isn’t a musician, I often wonder what inspires musicians to make music, and what they aim to achieve from making it. Errors always seem ambitious, yet understated, making music that sounds vast and sprawling, but with meticulous attention to detail.
As a dance music fan, I love the range of sounds within the genre and I am drawn towards tracks that could, as horrid as it sounds, be described as ‘spicy’ – although this conjures up images of a gurning cockney in the middle of a dancefloor with his collars turned up, finger dancing and telling you how spicy a tune is. It also makes me think of direct, engaging, fun music that gets your heart racing and makes you want to well….dance! Errors, while falling within the dance music bracket, are described as post-electronic and more likely to make you look like Kate Bush dancing to Wuthering Heights, than a committed gurner. But that, of course, is no bad thing.
Which brings me neatly, sort of, to New Relics, Errors third album, a mini album in size, but big in sound. The third single ‘Relics’, is a charming case in point, featuring atmospheric female vocals but with synths giving it the aforementioned ‘spice’ and structure. Hailed as one of the ‘most interesting bands in the UK’ by NME, Errors are always a beguiling listen as there are unexpected twists and turns within songs that leave you with ‘A-ha, I see what they were trying to do there’ moments. This is particularly true in ‘Hemlock’ with heavy synths pulling things back from ambient overdrive and producing a song that is unexpectedly cohesive.
All the songs on New Relics have a strange other worldly feel to them, with ‘Grangehaven’, sounding like it was made for the Japanese tourist board, its steady drum beat underlying an Asian influence. On ‘White Infinity’, vocals make a welcome return, albeit cautiously, to enhance the sound rather than tell a story. Despite the faraway feel to the vocals it is still possible to detect the Scottish lilt in same way as you can with Glasvegas or The Proclaimers, although that is where the similarities with those bands end. ‘White Infinity’ is a stand out track for me, because of its assertive nature, while ‘Pegasus’, the last track on the album, sounds a lot like the Cocteau Twins, but with the addition of Devo-esque synths, which leaves it plonked back somewhere on the dance music spectrum, and stops the song being entirely dreamy. At the end of the album I felt like I’d woken up from a pleasant deep sleep, laden with cheese dreams that made me eager to sleep again. Recommended.
Release Date 01/10/2012 (Rock Action)
When people ask me what music I am in to, I find it very hard to give a definitive answer because, throughout my life I have been in to all kinds of music from House to Heavy Metal. So I can safely say I am open to most things however, I would say that overall my allegiances lie with Electronic music because it covers so many genres and is constantly developing and changing. Having grown up in Manchester my musical tastes have been influenced by nights such as Electric Chair and Mr Scruff which encompasses the sounds of House, Detroit Techno, Disco, Soul, Funk and Hip Hop. As far as bands are concerned, I particularly like bands that are melodic and have a hook and a heart such as Wild Beasts. While living in London in the early noughties, I was also listening to music that didn’t really have a heart, more of a pacemaker. I was listening to Electroclash at nights such as Erol Alkan’s, Trash. I love writing about music and believe you can be honest about why you don’t like something without being disrespectful, a skill I am still learning in real life! But ultimately I understand that music needs to be experienced first, rather than intellectualised but why do one, when you can do both?
