My Inspiration: Robyn Errico – Illusion (Broken Scar Mix)

Darlington-based artist  Robyn Errico teams up with fellow Quaker and synthy sounds maker, Rich Stephenson for the release of Illusion (Broken Scar Mix). As the brackets suggest, the track is a reimagining of a previously released track Illusion, a song about knowing that a relationship should end but not wanting it to. However, this version switches up the grinding, industrial rhythms of the original with peppy beats more akin to progressive house, trance and electronica whilst accentuating and enhancing the haunting ambience of the track and the ethereal elegance of Robyn’s vocal. 

Here, Robyn goes into further detail about some of the inspirations behind the track…

Originally, Rich (who I co-produced the track with) wonderfully thought that in the first few lines of the song, I was singing about a priest standing at an airfield. I very much enjoy that, and I am sorry to disappoint anyone else who misheard any mention of either a priest or an airfield. Instead, the opening lines refer to the mosaic porches of the flats around Maida Vale where I lived briefly with some pals in 2021, and where this song came to be.

I had moved to London hoping for an injection of novelty and excitement but it didn’t take me long to realise that the city wasn’t for me – at least, not at that time. I’d just finished university and I could see all these little branching paths of potential futures, but I was afraid to commit to following any out of fear that I would make a wrong choice. Walking in loops around the block in the late evening – my long-time nightly habit – everything about my life up until that point came under the microscope. From the goals I thought I had and the ways I attempted to reach fulfilment, to the decisions I’d made about romantic connections and how they’d affected people… it was a time of pretty intense and uncomfortable reflection.

It was within this kind of broad context that I wrote Illusion. The song originally developed from a nice little sequence of arpeggios and was pretty slow and subdued – quite a contrast to what it has become in this new version! The lyrics basically centre around the idea of not wanting to shatter the illusion that the life you currently have is enough, while coming to realise that breaking it might be the only way to become closer to who you actually are or could be. For me, the whole essence of the song is summed up by the lyric “I tell myself a lot that what I feel is real but it’s not, it’s illusion”. Writing it was all about catharsis, and working out what was underneath that illusion for me.

From pretty early on, I knew it had potential as a more dance-type track and it was great fun to revisit the song and finally bring this version to life. It definitely feels like a door closing on that particular chapter of my songwriting, and now I’m excited for the next one!