With song titles like ‘Lease of Life’, ‘Early Nights’ and ‘New Winged Fire’ there is a sense of purity from their forthcoming March long player, Lease of Life, that is not present on their previous records. Little wonder given this album was born on the Isle of Jura, renowned as the birth town for Orwell’s iconic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, this album’s organic synthesised sound becomes much more anticipated, visceral and fresh.
Beginning with ‘Colossal Estates’ which fades in, building sound, emerging in the way new plants may grow; buds may open, with a cosmic flavour. The track opens the album rather beautifully, inviting the listener to engage with these tight electronic soundscapes that they are about to embark on over the course of Lease of Life.
With a well-executed sparsity and liberal use of vocals, we are instead indulged by an Errors record that boldly fuses their electronic worlds with a well-crafted songwriting ability. Their fourth album, it ambitiously materialises as a cinematic audio, evocative of their remote Hebridean inspiration. Comprised of Simon Ward, Stephen Livingston, Greg Paterson and James Hamilton, Errors have shifted significantly and progressively since they began back in 2004. Back then, this Glasgow bedroom electronic-based project tentatively emerged to this cohesively glued, poised, tight-knit record, emulating cosmic, yet natural ‘scapes that would at the same time nostalgically throw you back to the synthesised eighties.
As the title track builds, it entrances the listener – vaguely with a celestial sound, but mostly with the repetitive electronic beats. The layering of vocals, samples, percussion and synthesiser within the eight-minute track will almost guarantee a spot of head movement if not something with more vigour. ‘Dull Care’ thrusts its percussion through your bones, with fluttering electronic soundscapes and an uplifting build of synthesised sounds, which in themselves are not evocative of the rural language of Jura, but with the well-composed songwriting, vocals and rhythm creates a language of its own that speaks for the organic Sound of Jura.
‘Putman Caraibe’ has an intro that will cast you back to the eighties and television theme tunes as it moves into a prime drive-time track. And with those electronic sounds that remain stagnant in tempo, with the layers of synthesised aural noises and vocals building – and then settling to a fade but still retains a structure that has elements of the melodic which is perhaps unusual for this band.
Finishing and complementing the album nicely with the twelve-minute track, ‘Through The Knowledge Of Those Who Observe Us’, there sits a resolve at the end of this aural journey – one which takes us to new peaks and new beginnings. The harmonious vocals of the band, accompanied by – yet again – the repetitive, building sounds of the synthesiser, gradually increasing tempo, before closing this soundscape and then building it back up again half way through, until we “let go”. There’s a clearer, linear approach to the composition of each track and an encompassing sound of the record as a whole: warmly hugging our ears with this final track that succeeds in playing with our varying senses and emotive connections.
With this release we can also look forward to a new tour with a list of Spring dates that will see the band in venues such as the The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen, Brighton’s The Green Door Store and The Art School in Glasgow.
Lease Of Life is available on 23rd March for purchase and can be pre-ordered via this link
[Rating:4]
