Errors, Have Some Faith In Magic

Electronic music tends to be the fiefdom of the boffin or the wizard. It is generally practiced by people animated either by a love for the pristine exactitude offered by the minimizing of human input, or by hunger for the limitless sonic vistas machines enable.Glasgowoperation Errors embrace both traditions – as if their lab coats are shrouded by capes.

Have Some Faith In Magic, Errors’ third album, is an almost exclusively instrumental affair; when human vocals appear, as on “Earthscore” and “Holus-Bolus,” they’re spectral and translucent, ghosts in the machine. For the most part, Errors deal in vast, ornate sculptures of electronic sound. “The Knock” builds into something which, in its climactic movement, is reminiscent of Slovenian situationists Laibach, which is to say it suggests a totalitarian anthem constructed from the bleeps and pops of ’80s video games. The comparatively flighty and pretty “Pleasure Palaces” is but a minor deviation from Air’s Moon Safari. “Tusk,” meanwhile, appears to exist in the hope that someone will make another Miami Vice movie it can soundtrack.

The more intriguing moments on Have Some Faith In Magicare those in which Errors indulge a semi-prog tendency. “Magna Encarta” is iced with effects-heavy guitars, and resembles a Cocteau Twins track awaiting a giddy Liz Fraser trill. “Blank Media” gurgles and sighs like Daft Punk covering The Blue Nile. None of it makes much sense, but all of it compels interest. This is a weird record, by a weird group. This is intended as a compliment.