Having recently lost one member and slimmed down to a three-piece, Glasgow’s Errors have wasted little time in re-establishing themselves. New “mini” album “New Relics” follows swiftly on from “Have Some Faith In Magic” earlier this year, easily side-stepping the loss of momentum that often comes with line-up changes and keeping their fanbase active.
It’s an impression reinforced by the warm reception greeting Errors on the Edinburgh stopover of a short autumn UK tour. Tonight’s crowd in a moistly crammed Electric Circus are, frankly, pissed and up for it. It’s hard to distinguish between the indie hipsters tuning up onstage and those milling around on the dance-floor, until the former put down their instruments and exit only to wait a matter of seconds before ambling back on as the evening headliners.
Errors’ music has strived through various evolutionary points from its electro-rock origins. Tonight’s set begins with a melange of Krautrock and Eurotrance, topped off with tasteful Pink Floyd guitar playing that brings to mind David Gilmour noodling with Neu!
These near ambient passages aside, Errors spend much of their 75 minutes bashing out dense bass-heavy dance grooves which get the cool kids boogieing on down and causing Electric Circus to seriously shake and vibrate. Much of Errors current sound is a magpie grab-bag of pop-dance variations from the past and present, at times morphing into a 21st century soundtrack for 1980s’ John Hughes teen movies.
Front duo Simon Ward and Steven Livingstone are constantly splitting themselves between an array of guitars and keyboards while behind them James Hamilton bangs his head and batters his drums so hard it’s a wonder limbs don’t come flying off in all directions. At their fiercest, Errors are difficult to love, so brutally propulsive is the electro-onslaught, but it’s their moments of synth-funk euphoria that are most blissful.
They may have been preaching to the previously converted tonight, but these wide-eyed bevved-up acolytes are most certainly happy by the 10pm curfew time, if not sated, as they stagger en masse into the Saturday night in search of the next party.