Based in Glasgow, Errors meld together electronic sounds, post-rock song structure and dance influences for a sound that’s unique compared even to their closest peers (such as Battles or Ratatat).
They release their third album today, and it’s already been hailed by many critics as their strongest offering yet, coming out as all their other releases have on Mogwai’s Rock Action Records label.
It seems as though there’s no better time to get into the band, with the surreal video for this month’s new single Pleasure Palaces also stoking wider public interest.
Stephen Livingstone from the group told us: “We started recording for Have Some Faith in Magic in May of last year.
“We recorded it all in Simon’s flat because the studio we were in at the time, the roof collapsed in on it. We had to move out of there, but in the end it worked out pretty well.”
“We were a bit more comfortable,” explained fellow band member Simon Ward. “I could just roll out of bed and start recording.”
Stephen Livingston added: “We were quite professional with it though, we did quite long days, and it was seven days a week most of the time, we could into quite a good swing of things.”
Errors head out on a UK tour next month, supported by Rock Action Records label mates and fellow Glaswegian outfit Remember Remember, which includes Scottish dates at Dundee’s Doghouse on 24th February and Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree on 25th February. After that is their biggest headline show in Glasgow to date at The Arches on 11th May.
Of the difference between Have Some Faith in Magic and previous albums Come Down With Me (2010) It's Not Something But It Is Like Whatever (2008), Steev explained: “I think with each record we try to better what we’ve done before.”
Simon said: “I think it’s slightly more consistent as well, musically, just because we actually sat down and did it in a block of time, rather than doing a bit here and a bit there and eventually there’s a record a year.”
Stephen explained: “We didn’t do anything else for the summer, basically, we just did that, and it seems a good way of working for us.
“There’s lots of different things, such as the vocals being on it, that we’ve never used on previous records.”
Of moving away from being purely instrumental, he said semi-jokingly: “We wanted to treat the vocals as another instrument, rather than as a way of saying anything interesting, because we don’t really have anything interesting to say – as you can tell.
“We knew we wanted to do vocals, but we thought very carefully about how we were going to do them, and what effect we were going to have by doing them.”
The album is out today, and when we talked to them the pair were just starting to receive feedback from reviews and the record being streamed online.
Simon said: “It’s nice to see people’s reactions to the record now. You can see people responding pretty positively, and it’s nice to know that we’ve done something right in some way, I guess, because you always want people to like music to some extent.
Stephen added: “It’s funny though, it only takes one bad or negative thing written for you to focus just on that, and everything else just goes out of the window.”
And of being on Rock Action Records, he said: “They’ve been really supportive right from the start, back in the early days. It was basically the second show that we ever did, and they approached us and said ‘Do you want to do a record?’
“I didn’t really realise at the time that that meant that we were signed to a label. I just thought they’ll put out a single of ours, and that’ll be it. I don’t think I would have imagined that six or seven years later we’d be on to our third album with them.”
ERRORS ON STV
- Errors unveil video for new single Pleasure Palaces
- The Scotch Snap: Errors restore your belief in magic
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