In recent years some of the more interesting music being made has included that by a series of bands mining, loosely speaking, new kraut / post rock / math / electro / nu rave influences. Acts like Holy Fuck, Battles, Explosions in the Sky, etc, have taken earlier templates, from prog to kraut rock and invested them with a new sense of lightness and - well - fun. It was with some anticipation, then, that I took delivery of the new album by Errors, a band that is being much talked of along these very lines.Having released an EP a couple of years ago called How Clean is Your Acid House, you might be forgiven for expecting their first full-length release to feature unadulterated banging dance music, but this is not what you will find. Opener ‘Dance Music" (!) serves as a good indicator of delights to come, by combining the kind of chiming guitar sound familiar from post rock with a wistful synth backing, before moving things up a step with more electro-sounding bleepage. A little demure to be straightforward ‘Dance Music', it's nonetheless a satisfying blend of sounds and styles.Stand-out track on the album for me, and undoubtedly the one that will probably receive the most notice, was ‘Cutlery Drawer'. Containing the album's only lyrics, in the form of a deadpan spoken-word recitation by a young woman telling, in disjointed fashion, of a night out and its consequences, its appearance about three quarters of the way through the album lifts things just at the right moment. The story is written and, I believe, also narrated, by (female) writer George Pringle - to read the full story, see her myspace blog here. The detached way that she drawls that "Well, the thing was, they were on uppers, and she really couldn't think of a worse combination. People in Oxford didn't know how to do drugs ", and talks of the girls at the party who "had been giving her uglies all night. Perhaps it was because she hadn't bothered enough with her clothes " all have an authentic ring to them, and the electronic backing, and way that the occasional word in the vocal is synthesized and altered complement this very effectively.Some tracks veer more towards the dancey end of the spectrum: ‘National Prism', with its heavy bassline and satisfying riffage; ‘Salut! France': synth-led and with a combination of real drums and cheesy drum machine beats; while others would not sound out of place on one of Mogwai's mellower moments: ‘The Bagpipes', with its lovely rich guitar sounds and emotional peaks and troughs, for example. A lot of the time different styles are combined within a track, such as ‘Toes' which has a distinctively improvised jazz vibe, as well as making me think of a slightly less playful Battles. Perhaps the main problem that I found with all of this is that the music didn't ever really seem to quite scale the heights possible in any of the various genres that were being used. So: the post rock was never quite the awe-inspiring mix of heaviness and wonder that it can become, the electro and ravey bits never totally made me want to just jump up and dance, and the jazz bits didn't quite reach the levels of ‘out there' experimentation that you were hoping for. Once listened to with this in mind, the (initially bizarre) album title begins to make lots of sense.

For a totally satisfying kraut rock, acid house or post rock experience, then, I would direct you elsewhere, to some of the acknowledged masters in those fields (and no I'm not going to suggest names: there's an argument/discussion that could go on for days!). For an enjoyable, listenable melding of a whole bunch of different moods, instruments, genres and sounds, however, you could do far worse than lend Errors your ears. 75%

[Download Errors It's Not Something But It Is Like Whatever]

Links: Errors [myspace] [official site]