Release Date: January 31st, 2012
Don’t ever start by listening to Errors through laptop speakers. It’s a good rule of thumb with any music, but with this album especially. Even if it’s just until headphones are plugged in, don’t judge it until there’s sufficient fidelity. The difference is dramatic – between hit and miss, really. it could be said that Errors greatest strength lies in sound quality itself. The Scottish quartet have put such attention to detail that they deserve to be called, like their album art, pointillists. Actually, there are times when it gets “too real,” the music is so crisp and refined that it doesn’t seem like a part of this world.
Since there’s no apparent theme to Have Some Faith in Magic the Rock Action ruffians choose to bang out tunes as strange and eclectic as themselves; Gregorian style chanting backs angular synth textures and an assortment of live percussion. Opener “Tusk” hearkens back to Prog with its histrionic guitar lines wailing over the mix. Lead single “Magna Encarta” is more the vast “Post-Electro” haze we’ve come to know and love the band for. One quality they haven’t lost is to put human back into the machine; even the most synthetic of runs manage to bend and squeal, defying its pitch-perfect creation.
While it is a fun collection and there’s nothing per se wrong with it, there’s also nothing about Have Some Faith in Magic that pierces. There are so many groups using era-authentic instrumentation to sound dated that it’s easy to get muddled in the bunch. This is a collection songs that never really challenge the listener nor do they make one want to get up and gyrate, it’s all washy ambience. But that’s a choice, a choice from a singles-oriented group, and it’s not for lack of experience. That the band made their public debut on Total Request Live goes to show just how long they’ve been in the wings. It’s hard to believe that this is only their third album.
Errors are frequently compared to Battles, and not unjustly. Their instrumentation, tempos and sounds brought back from the future add intrigue. They are also quite alike in their use of voice not as something that speaks but produces tone. On the glowing “Cloud Chamber” it seems like the airy chanting is begging to mean something, in some dead language; alas, it’s just sounds, just another element in the tapestry. And as each number lapses on the album the effect is something like a feel-good documentary on human life or the planet: Scenes so disparate and diverse, one can hardly hope to make sense or empathize with them. And yet they are by turns mesmerizing, lustrous and exotic, making you feel connected to something larger than yourself.
Errors – Have Some Faith in Magic tracklist:
- “Tusk”
- “Magna Encarta”
- “Blank Media”
- “Pleasure Palaces”
- “The Knock”
- “Canon”
- “Earthscore”
- “Cloud Chamber”
- “Barton Spring”
- “Holus-Bolus”
