Emerging from London’s underground scene, Ritual Error unleashes their debut album Dial In The Ghost, out today via Manchester’s TNS Records. Today, we dive deep into each and every track from this release, through a special rundown offered by the band.
Comprising vocalist and guitarist Okala Elesia, drummer David Thair, and bassist Alessandro Incorvaia, the band blends elements of post-hardcore and noise-rock, drawing inspiration from acts like the Minutemen and early ’90s San Diego post-hardcore.
After two years of touring—including performances at Manchester Punk Festival and Decolonise Festival, and supporting acts like McClusky at The Lexington—Ritual Error has developed a sound that is super tight and dynamic. Elesia’s treble-focused guitar work and fervent vocals hover on the edge of chaos, balanced by Thair’s precise drumming and Incorvaia’s steady bass lines, and thanks to that, it all sounds really natural and organic.
Recorded by Wayne Adams of Bear Bites Horse, Dial In The Ghost captures the atmosphere of their live shows across ten tracks with shifting harmonics and significant force.
“We want to give a shout-out to our friend Wayne Adams of Bear Bites Horse who recorded, mixed and mastered Dial in the Ghost.” – says the band.
“He’s recorded so many killer records, but the best thing is he also listens to your ideas and then tries to make them work. We hope you dig the record! Pick up a copy, tell your friends, tell the promoters in your own town. We love you!”
The album delves into themes of modern anxiety, political disillusionment, and personal identity. Ritual Error provides a detailed commentary on each track, offering insights into their creative process and thematic intentions. Check it out below.
Good Conscience in Three Stages
Woof. This is the first song we recorded after becoming a trio. A week before, we were sitting in the saddest pub in London, saying goodbye to our old singer. After eating crisps and drinking lemonade, the three of us then looked at each other and were like, “well, what else are we gonna do?”
The truth is, there’s a lot of things we could’ve ‘done’; like reconnectingwith our partners, or using the time to meaningfully reevaluate ourselves as people. But we didn’t. We figured let’s try and do the band even harder.
This track captures the sound we have stumbled onto: lean, paranoid sounding post-hardcore that might be noise-rock and is a bit chaotic in nature (LPSPHTMBNRAIABCIN for short). The song is very specifically about Tony Blair being visited by the ghosts of the Iraqi and Afghan dead, who escape from the TV and plan to wig out all over his sleeping ass. But when they find him, they discover he sleeps soundly (because he is obviously a motherfucker) and are unable to carry him to their world. As they traipse back out towards the dead static of the TV, the wist is he’s pretending to sleep soundly and is actually shitting himself.
Cos we have to think someone like that believes there is a Hell and that they’re going there. We talk about Hell a lot on thisrecord, which is weird because the UK is such a perfect, lovely place to live. Everyone is happy here!
The Living Archive
For a long time, the working title for this track was ‘Minutemen’ because of Okala’s unhealthy obsession with D. Boon and the boys. Before that, it started life as one of Ale’s infamous Trilogy of Pain bassline ideas; so called because he gave them all gnarly names like ‘cutting’ and ‘burning’.
But look, what you’re getting here is 1 minute and 30 seconds of sharp guitars, pounding bass and drum roll abuse. We wrote this song in consultation with a New York entrepreneur who made his fortune in energy drinks. The idea was that he hasn’t felt a thing since he was 5 years old and so a short blast of Ritual Error might help him connect with humanity. Alas, he still feels nothing and we didn’t get paid. The song is about someone who has been forced to put their entire life into storage. It stays there so long that it begins to become a ‘living archive’. You just can’t write this stuff.
Life As a Contact Sport
Probably the angriest song on the record. Somewhere between noise rock and post-hardcore. Simply, it’s about trying to stay positive enough to keep organising in a world that has normalised the drowning of babies and the inhumanity of borders. Somehow, you have to both harden yourself to that reality and still strive to feel stuff and make a difference, however small. Apathetic punks can fuck off! Same with all-sides punks. We recorded a video for this song, which was a first for us as a band. We were lucky enough to film in the empty auditorium at Earth in Hackney with our pal Richard Mukuze who is the coolest, chillest dude and everyone should hire. Turns out shooting music videos is weird, though: you spend a lot of time figuring out how to ‘perform’ your usually very loud music without making noise to really take it in at the time.
Haldeman
Canonically, this is the third song we ever wrote. We called it ‘Slow Start’ because… well, maybe you can figure that out. We had the opening guitar intro for ages and nothing else. And then one day Ale kicked down the door of the practice room and laid down the bass riff with harmonics. The blast was so powerful that the song wrote itself. We didn’t ask why he was wearing a full-length mac with no pants; we didn’t need to. This was an auteur at work. It’s named after the science fiction writer Joe Haldeman who wrote the Forever War. Everyone should read that. He also wrote another novel about a transdimensional copyright agency that hunts down Hemingway forgeries across the different dimensions. No one should read that.
Twin
The sound of the summer. The sound of a summer. Another song that started as a jam before Ale and David took it upon themselves to beat it into shape. We wrote this song so that we could get onto festivals, specifically the ones that only book bands that play with capos. Like with the energy drink guy from New York, we were told this song would lead to wealth and prosperity. We have neither and are now required to play the song live. It’s weirdly therapeutic to play a song that keeps a steady pace because we are so used to jumping around between sections. Lyrically, it’s about someone mourning the loss of a person they never got to meet. The section in the middle third reminds us a little bit of Rodan!
Artist at Work
Midway through the recording of this record, David told us he wanted a drum solo. Conscious that he is a threatening individual, we agreed. Artist at Work is cool to us because it’s kind of wonky; it pieces together a lot of the 80s and 90s stuff we dig and churns it out into something we hope sounds modern. This is another from the Trilogy of Pain…we used to refer to it as Biting. The title of the song is a riff on the story of the same name by Camus. Unlike that story though, the narrator finds that taking a closer look at their life only causes them to despise it more than they did before. So much so that they begin to see the physical world stripped away to reveal Hell. So to avoid that, the song suggests you need to stay shallow. Rotate like a rotisserie chicken in the juices of culture, but don’t do anything that would cause you to feel uncomfortable or care about other people. After all, you are an Artist.
Tear Jerker
The UK is garbage. Just a big old sausage of nostalgia and piss. And yet, because of inequity the world over, we are weirdly fortunate to live here. This song is about a family who are diagnosed by a doctor with nostalgia. They try to shake it: the feeling that everything was better 50 years ago, but can’t. Even when they’re shown that things weren’t better, they don’t believe it. They are continually harking back to a time that never existed. Enough with UK exceptionalism! It’s embarrassing. The band Martha explained it succinctly on Hope Gets Harder: “Drain the blood from every diamond on this damp and hateful island.”
Return to Lagos
The last one from the Trilogy of Pain, originally referred to as Cutting. You will not be surprised to learn we wrote this song so that we could get free flights to Nigeria. At least half of the songs we write are done in the hope someone will give us free flights. When playing this one live, we usually dedicate it to anyone with “bad dads”, because that’s what it’s about. Recently, though, we’ve begun dedicating it to “bad dads”, recognising that a core part of our audience are likely deadbeat parents. We also touch on being mixed race and feeling like you’re between cultures. The song is called Return to Lagos because it’s both a statement and a question. If a person is your sole window to another world, how do you connect with them, especially when they’re an asshole?
Tell Me When You’ve Found It
Being in a band is a great privilege. You get to play towns and cities you’ve never visited before. You meet some of the best people in the world. About 5% of the time, you also meet some of the slimiest people in the game. This latter group of people make up booking agents, boastful bands, and the odd dodgy promoter. This rock and roll ditty reimagines the age-old relationship between band and promoter as an over-dramatic war film. From pay-to-play shows, to promoters and fellow bands who don’t pay you. At this level (and probably most levels), being ‘paid’ doesn’t mean the money goes into your pocket; it means less of your own money disappears from your wallet. So, pay bands like you said so they can stick to their carefully curated debt management plans.
Untitled
Also known as Do You Want Shoegaze or the Truth? The drone-y clip at the start was recorded by David. We loved the idea of doing a secret track, but an expedited one you don’t have to wait 50 minutes for. We’re saving that for the second record.
