Premiere: E.W. Harris Shares New Single “Accidents Repeating” | Under the Radar | Music Blog for the Indie Music Magazine
Saturday, February 8th, 2025  

Premiere: E.W. Harris Shares New Single “Accidents Repeating”

New EP MACHINE LIVING IN RELIEF Due Out on March 28th

Jan 22, 2025 Photography by J. Elle

Over the past few years, indie singer/songwriter E.W. Harris has landed on a unique marriage of theme and style, writing dystopian sci-fi narratives traced in idiosyncratic folktronica. After getting his start with roots rock band Luminous and jazz folk outfit The Eric Harris Group, Harris began incorporating unusual instruments, DIY percussion, and space-faring effects into his solo music, lacing them into character portraits set in his imagined post-apocalyptic future.

Most recently, Harris returned last year with news of his latest EP, MACHINE LIVING IN RELIEF. The concept for the project came out of a last-call barroom challenge to write an acoustic record about robots and AI. He introduced the project with his lead single, “The Nail Beside The Door,” and today he is following with another new track, “Accidents Repeating,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Accidents Repeating” is a misty and mystic turn for Harris, building atop fingerpicked acoustic tones, glittering instrumental accents, and swirling vocal harmonies. The track thrums with understated momentum, steadily trading moody intimacy for lush instrumental spirals until it ascends into a celestial, impassioned finale. Harris’ vocals take a similar progression, beginning almost monotone as his lyrics come out in a chaotic tumble before later hitting plaintive high notes at the song’s climax. All along, Harris colors the track’s margins with unique textures, like the scratchy yet beautiful arpeggios which he says were created using a broken autoharp.

Harris explains of the track, “This is a bit of a stream-of-consciousness kind of tune from the perspective of a non-corporeal AI. This might be my favorite number on the record at the moment because I got a real opportunity to play with the words. “Zero one off and on often in between but never meeting digital and bleeding accidents repeating,” is the initial line, and I love how the lack of grammar lets the word relationships kind of blend. It’s a bit like the panda who “eats shoots and leaves” thing…but dark and moody.

There’s not really a plot per se, more like a cascade of related ideas that happen to rhyme. I did try to outline the main perspective a little with binary code and machine imagery, but ultimately I think the tune works more like ideas work (mine anyway). A bunch of images and collections of data collide, rational and non-rational, connections are formed, and an idea is born.

Production-wise this one was initially written and arranged as a kind of art-rock tune by myself and Sonny Ratcliff over at Wildwood Recording Studio in Brooklyn. Though I do often perform this song with a band we’re calling The Zero Saga more or less as written, for this collection I wanted to see if I could capture a similar vibe with only acoustic instruments. For me, the broken autoharp is the hero in this one. Getting all those stringy-scrapey textures obliterated my nails, but I’m very happy with the results.”

Check out the song below and stream it here. The MACHINE LIVING IN RELIEF EP is due out on March 28th.

E.W. Harris · Accidents Repeating


Comments

Submit your comment

Name Required

Email Required, will not be published

URL

Remember my personal information
Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below:

There are no comments for this entry yet.