Soft Error

In the latter part of the 2010s, Tim and Rupert—two composers and songwriters known solely by those names—launched Soft Error after careers spanning film scoring and electronic music circles. The act’s obscure beginnings reflected the enigmatic and frequently unsettling character of their instrumental work. Drawing evenly from each domain of their shared history, early material wove together synthesizer-driven scores from low-budget 1980s horror films with the bleaker experiments of instrumental pop acts such as Ash Ra Tempel and La Düsseldorf. Their first album, Mechanism, appeared in early 2017 on the Village Green label. The nine-track set, tracked at Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik, Iceland, layered the group’s darkly nostalgic synth textures with passages recalling the exploratory mid-’90s output of the Warp Records roster.