Be warned: Enter the world of Charms, and you are encountering a place that is exhilarating, disorienting, and seductive as hell. Feel like facing your demons today? Their songs are the soundtrack for you. It’s definitely not background music—the band’s immense, torrential, razor-edged sound will charge into your speakers (and your brain) and demand your full attention.
Human Error, out June 16 on Killroom Records, is the first album for Charms. Lead singer/guitarist E.J. Tolentino, keyboardist and synth master Joshua McCormick, and drummer Ray McCoy first recorded Human Error in a “decent studio for cheap,” explains Tolentino, but they ran into technical issues. When they played the master for producer Randall Dunn (from Master Musicians of Bukkake), he said they could do better—and offered to produce it with the band. Dunn’s workflow, says Tolentino, was “incredibly efficient”—they had everything tracked, recorded, mixed, and mastered within a week’s time.