The Hebridean Isle Of Jura: the location where George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four; a place where The KLF are rumoured to have burned a million quid; and, now, the birthplace of ‘Lease of Life’ and base camp for Errors’ overdue ascent to music’s summit.
A new lease of life is just what the fourth album from the Glasgow band demonstrates, its new ambitions evident from the outset, likewise a desire to challenge themselves to explore fresh soundworlds. ‘Lease Of Life’ is a bold work borne by confidence and shaped, partially, by newly acquired vintage hardware, synthesizers and drum machines. It’s an album on which familiarly alien technology is combined with these musicians’ most accessible, immediate songwriting yet.

It is also the band’s most cohesive album statement to date: a start-to-finish experience that’s bound by recurring constituents and accomplished craft. It was written and recorded in a relatively short space of time, beginning on Jura. This remoteness can be felt in several instances, the band citing the afternoons on the isle spent staring out to sea as having an influence on the overall feel of some of the album’s longer songs. “The trip to Jura was intended to be an intensive writing and recording session, but it became so much more,” says Steev Livingstone. “The island is steeped in history and folklore, and I don’t think it’s possible to go there and not feel that. Some of that has definitely coloured the mood of the record.”
Appearing alongside the core trio of Livingstone, Simon Ward and James Hamilton are two guest vocalists in Cecilia Stamp and Bek Oliva (Magic Eye). And then there’s the small matter of a 20-person choir.

It was in 2012 that Errors last released an album, namely the critically celebrated ‘Have Some Faith In Magic’ – “Moments of wide-eyed wonder are many,” wrote NME of the set, with the BBC calling it “their most composed, defined album to date”.

The same year also saw the release of an eight-track mini-album, ‘New Relics’, which The Line Of Best Fit summarized as “a step into a deeper vortex of sound, creating a hypnotising state in which to immerse yourself further into their kaleidoscopic world”.

‘Lease Of Life’ furthers those enveloping qualities, its propulsive passages of instant-click efficiency like the sweet-yet-sinister oscillations of ‘Dull Care’ complemented by bubbling, psychedelic dance numbers: ‘New Winged Fire’ and ‘Genuflection’ are future floor-fillers at the best club this side of the end of the world. “I think our music has always had a surreal quality to it,” says Livingstone. “Not knowing if something’s real or synthetic in music has always interested us. And that continues across to the artwork. The plant looks very realistic, but when you’re really close up to it, you can tell it’s a computer-generated model. We’re trying to tap into the uncanny valley throughout this whole record.”

“With a lot of the sounds on the new synths we’re using (including a Korg M1, beloved of 808 State and Vangelis), the line between what sounds real and what’s actually artificial becomes quite blurred,” says Ward. “That’s a consistent thing across the album. Sometimes it felt like we could build a whole song around just one great sound.” The first song to be finished on ‘Lease Of Life’ was actually its closer, the near-quarter-hour-long ‘Through The Knowledge Of Those Who Observe Us’, a track inspired lyrically and thematically by the band’s interest in the hyperbole often found in religious music. That such a radical departure for the and, incorporating saxophone and that choir, came first naturally set a precedent for the rest of the album to follow – there was no chance of ‘Lease Of Life’ merely replicating what’d come before it.

The band has grown-up a lot since its earliest, distinctly electro singles like ‘Hans Herman’ and ‘Salut! France’ – today, while the creative process is comparable, the end results are reaching previously unrealised highs. And ‘Through The Knowledge...’ is a fantastic illustration of this, where the digital meets the physical, and the studied is balanced by the spontaneous. “Using a choir is something we had wanted to do for a while,” says Livingstone, “but we lacked the confidence before to go out and get a choir for it, or to get a saxophonist to play on it. The guitar part, at the end was recorded in one take as I wanted that feeling of being in moment to come across. There are mistakes in it but that really appeals to me, especially in this age where singers can be corrected with Auto-Tune and editing can be done at the click of a button. Leaving in imperfections reveals so much more than if we just airbrushed over everything.”
The vocals, up at the forefront of the mix, play their part with greater prominence than ever before. While these humanising elements were commonly employed as colour on previous albums, adding textural detail to songs on 2008’s ‘It’s Not Something But It Is Like Whatever’, 2010’s ‘Come Down With Me’ and the aforementioned brace of 2012, now words have purpose and meaning.

“I haven’t written down lyrics since I was 15 years old,” says Livingstone. “I tried to give the words a lot of thought this time and actually have meaning behind them.” The idea of playing with the listener’s perceptions through instrumentation and artwork has been extended through the lyrics, no more so than on ‘Putman Caraibe’ – it appears at first to be a love song, but with each new line something darker and more sinister is hinted at. The contrast the two female singers bring to the album’s aesthetic is striking – again on ‘Putman Caraibe’, the ethereal and emotive tones of Oliva are both mainsail and anchor, driving the piece onwards while keeping it steady against rising waves of shimmering keys. Livingstone and Stamp duet on ‘Slow Rotor’, her staccato lines heralding the arrival of synchronised singing, a rush of warmth from a band previously acknowledged as masters of their machines.

“This is definitely our best record yet,” says Livingstone, confidently. It’s an easy thing to say, but first contact with ‘Lease Of Life’ is all it takes for this collection to substantiate his statement. Some might say Errors’ elevation to the highest level of recognition and respect is overdue – but that means looking back, assessing the past, when all these musicians have in mind is what comes next. ‘Lease Of Life’ is the foundation for a new chapter of boundless creativity.

Tracklisting
1. Colossal Estates
2. Lease of Life
3. Slow Rotor
4. New Winged Fire
5. Early Nights
6. Dull Care
7. Genuflection
8. Putman Caraibe
9. Through the Knowledge of Those Who O