Album of the Week: Errors – Have Some Faith in Magic
Thank fuck for Errors.
In these times of economic Armageddon, Middle East unrest and what seems to have been a spate of rather grisly murders of late, you can always rely on Scotland’s finest exponents of math-funk (© The Tidal Wave of Indifference 2012) to transport you to another place as they beam down their altogether pleasant sounds.
2010′s Come Down With Me was a classic of sorts, and one which saw them start to throw off the supposed shackles of post rock, which were ill-fitting anyway. The dancefloor-friendly Supertribe and A Rumour in Africa sounded sod all like Mogwai, and hey, while we’re at it, just because bands share a label doesn’t mean they sound alike, eh?
Those shackles are well and truly off on Have Some Faith in Magic. Like its predecessor, it’s ten sharp sounding rhythmic blasts, but far from a facsimile, this is more focused on synths and beats than anything they’ve done before.
And there’s vocals too. The signs were there on pre-release freebie Earthscore as mumbled wisps of human utterances chased spidery guitar and juddering bass over the whole song, and it’s a theme that’s carried across the whole album.
Don’t expect a lyric sheet though. Most of the wordsmithery is incomprehensible and simply acts as a additional instrument in an already heady mix where nary a second of …Magic’s running time goes to waste.
Also where Come Down With Me blasted out a number of instant toetappers, the, approach here is more measured. Magna Encarta takes it time, but is still a big, big tune stuffed with time changes and synths that will get you whirling both physically and mentally, helping you forget that horrible big world outside. By the time the soung wraps up with crashing drums you’ll be bloody beside yourself.
We grabbed a chat with the band’s Steev Livingstone last week.
It feels like a non-stop few years for the band – ever plan to take your feet off the pedal?
On the inside it doesn’t really feel like that. I get guilty if I’m sitting about not doing very much, so that kind of ensures that we are quite productive. But I’m still in bed typing this up and it’s one in the afternoon so it’s not like i’m Mr Motivator or anything.
We argued about where this came from and who came up with it. Simon believes it was words of wisdom that he gave to Greg before recording a guitar part that he was unsure about. As with most of our titles, to us it doesn’t really mean anything, other people always will explain what it means for you so we could really call our albums anything we wanted and people would interpret them or read into them in what ever way they wanted to. In our video for Earthscore, there is a white witch performing a ritual where he blesses a crystal for us to protect us on tour, he sent it up to us on the post and now I carry it with me everywhere.
I’d say this is our most consistent sounding record yet. It also has a lot more space in it and we’ve learnt how to give things space to breathe a little better I think. Most obviously we’ve included vocals on nine of the ten tracks on the record, so I reckon for a lot of people that will be a big difference for them. We adopted a sort of stream of consciousness approach to writing on a lot of the tracks where we were trying not to repeat or return to sections that had already happened. The tune “The Knock” is a good example of this.
The only thing I don’t like about going on tour is not being able to write any music, I’ve tried it in the past and it’s a very frustrating experience.
