Music > Interviews

Errors

25/02/15

Errors are a band of Glaswegian musicians who have been creating post-electro music for the last 11 years. Signed to Mogwai’s label, their latest album Lease of Life is out on 23rd March and was partly written on the remote island where The KLF are rumoured to have burned one million pounds. It’s a step forward for the band, with fresh sounds inspired by 90’s keyboards and guest vocalists. I chatted with guitarist and keyboard player Simon about getting older and Celebrity Comedown With Me (that ain’t no spelling mistake, readers).

The band got together 11 years ago now; how have you changed during that time?

Yeah we’ve changed, musically and probably as people in every way possible. 11 years is a long time to be doing anything and the most obvious change is in the music really, for people who are our fans. They won’t notice that we’ve become old and have become interested in old people things, and want to spend our money on things other than keyboards!

Why are you called Errors?

Good question! I think we were struggling for a name. There’s no exciting story for that. We’d agreed to do a gig with a friend’s band, and we didn’t have a name, so we just came up with Errors. I think a friend named us actually. If we were starting out now I think I’d probably go for a new name. I’m not the biggest fan of it but we weren’t expecting it to carry on and do the things we ended up doing.

Speaking of naming, how do you go about naming your tracks and albums?

Usually it’s the result of a stupid conversation we were having at the time on tour! I used to write them down in a notebook, things that were funny, but I stopped and then when we came to try and get track titles for the new album we really struggled. You may notice the track titles are a bit more serious this time; it’s due to a lack of imagination and we’ve not been touring much.

Your album Come Down With Me was a play on Come Dine With Me, and you followed it up with Celebrity Come Down With Me with remixes by people like Gold Panda. Is Come Dine With Me the band’s favourite show?

I’ve watched so many, I couldn’t pick one. I do enjoy a celebrity one; I’m amazed that a celebrity, or indeed anyone would want to put themselves through that humiliation. It’s like destroying yourself! I don’t really know if I’m that interested in watching a regular person eat their dinner! I think James had some good ideas for people who would be on Celebrity Comedown With Me; celebrities on comedowns. Live, brutal television!

You wrote some of your new album on the remote island of Jura where only 200 people live and millions of deer. Did this environment affect the sound of this album?

The idea was to go away to somewhere remote and concentrate; there’s no Internet there so we didn’t get as distracted. It was great to have the solitude, but also there’s lots of interesting history on Jura. That’s where the KLF burnt all their money and George Orwell used to live there. There’s lots of weird folklore about the island about Vikings and stuff, so I like to think some of that subconsciously went into the album.

You’ve used new vintage hardware, synths and drum machines for this album. Did you just get random stuff to see what music you could create or did you choose your instruments carefully?

It was a deliberate choice of stuff. We didn’t really go out to do it for this record, but over the course of the last 18 months our tastes have changed, which they should do to remain interested in music and we became interested in other sounds. A lot of the time, it’s the sounds that decide for me whether or not I like someone’s music, because a lot of the time people are writing songs that have been produced in a certain way, or to sound like a certain period of time, like a lot of ‘80’s sounds at the moment. I got quite tired of hearing that so I got more interested in hearing more ‘90’s keyboard stuff, like the keyboards that Enya used, stuff like that, that you might hear on Orinoco Flow. We wanted to use sounds that other people weren’t using right now.

Is it almost inevitable that when using vintage synths you’ll get a bit of an ‘80’s or ‘90’s sound in there?

I think it is, yeah. It kind of informs the style; it’s how you dress up a song. You have your melodies and your chords, your different parts of songs, but it’s not until you dress it up in those sounds that you can really change things. I find that really interesting.

You used a 20 person choir for Through The Knowledge Of Those Who Observe Us; what was that experience like, recording with them?

It was good! Steev was really keen to work with a big choir and get an epic vocal and he worked out all the parts. We had a friend who was the organiser of a choir, who translated it into what the choir should sing. We did it in an old church hall building and it was something we’d never done before. Steev wants to do it live, but we’d have to hire a few extra vans and some of the venues we play it would be impossible. Maybe we could put them in the audience!

At times it’s hard to tell whether elements of your sound is synthetic or natural, rather like the plant on your album cover. Was this intentional?

Yes! That’s totally it! Was that easy to work out? I didn’t know if that was obvious or whether it was an interesting thing to do. It’s been the case with previous albums as well; some keyboards sound like guitars, and some guitars sound like keyboards and you don’t really know what’s what. You might not know unless you see us live. There’s a lot of synthetic stuff on this album; you’ve basically summed it up really…the artwork informs the music!

You’re signed to Mogwai’s label, have toured with Churches and you’ve got Ubre Blance supporting you on your upcoming tour. Do Glaswegian bands support each other well?

Yes, there’s always been a good scene here. As you get older you feel like you don’t go out as much, so I don’t know if everyone’s at club nights now or if they still want to be in bands, but I’m still pretty sure it’s still there. Even those bands you’ve mentioned, they’re all pretty well associated with each other even though they don’t sound in any way the same. I mean everyone’s played in a band with each other at some point. Glasgow’s got a long history of that, certainly up to the ‘late ‘80’s and 90’s anyway, and I think it’s partly because it’s quite a small, condensed city; there’s only 10 venues and they’re all next to each other.

You seem to increasingly use more vocals, but used more as an instrument than traditional vocals. What do you feel the vocals add to your music that wasn’t there in the early days?

It just felt like there was space for it. We’ve grown in confidence as a band; maybe when we were younger we’d feel like we didn’t need vocals on a song, or we didn’t fancy it, but then you realise that sometimes there’s only so much you can do with sounds to put in a place where a vocal might be. Sometimes it’s just easier to put a vocal in! It’s just a different way of doing a similar thing. It’s also another way of exploring your musical possibilities. It’s normal for other bands who sing anyway but for us it was like working backwards.

Errors play Norwich Arts Centre on 30th March. Tickets from www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk