Bleep

Brothers Ed and Tom Russell have exhibited boundless enthusiasm for their craft as producers, diligently digging into their stash of mixtapes and record bins for the perfect sample that’ll bring the house down when torn up into a dynamic club track. After a seven year streak of captivating EPs, their highly anticipated and faultless debut album Good Lies is here.

The world has kept a watchful eye on the brothers, not least for their solo projects as Tessela and Truss, but for their career defining collaborations as Overmono. Their Poly Kicks label was founded in 2013 for each artist’s own creative pursuits, as well as the exciting DJ tools series 50 Locked Grooves featuring releases from Beatrice Dillon, Joy Orbison, and Haroon Mirza, setting the scene for their debut Arla EP in 2016 that has made Overmono their main gig ever since. With each new release firmly cementing their "modern legend status", they’ve made a home out of XL Recordings, continuing its legacy of authentic and inventive dance music.

The Dobermanns have frolicked through artwork for Overmono’s releases since 2020’s Everything U Need EP, and it’s hard to imagine a better or more iconic visualisation of the duo’s sound. Good Lies isn’t afraid to let visceral club music get into its feelings, giving texture to its pneumatic hissing beats with synthetic hums and multifaceted vocal edits, much like how the Dobermanns’ reputation for aggressive guard dog temperament belies their true nature as “beautiful, vulnerable, playful animals”. The brothers have teased and tested these themes both in their music and on the road, taking material to the world’s biggest stages before it all culminates on their debut album.

Vocalists define the structure and direction of Good Lies yet have no active involvement in the songwriting or arrangement, allowing Overmono to revel in the appropriation and sampling. They are producers rounding up a star studded list of features, but with complete creative control to play with those contributions as much as they like. And as with their many synth timbre manipulations, Overmono show sampled vocals to be yet another highly malleable instrument at their disposal.

Carrying on from their previous EP Cash Romantic while also calling back to the heated raves of their introductory Arla trio, Overmono explore in greater detail semi-ambient meditations and synth hypnagogia and make good on their penchant for atmospheric, banging club tracks. 'Feelings Plain' eases us in with the bare essentials: deep bass thuds and spectrally chopped vocal samples that reverently harmonise as the layers build. It acts almost like a mission statement for the duo, highlighting their background in kinetic dance music with a focus on pop and R&B vocals dissolved into tape flutters.

'Arla Fearn' signals the ruckus incoming, with overpowering low frequencies tunnelling beneath a slick and slippery two-step beat sure to soundtrack many warehouse raves. Corroded, classic house-tinged keys lead into the title track, a sunlit contrast of movement-inducing breakbeat shuffles and dazzling chords becoming more gloriously detuned as the track ends in club euphoria, with a sample from labelmate Smerz disintegrating into the aftermath.

Sifting through the sonic rubble, the album wades in and out of hypnagogic vocal manipulations, acid dreaming, and coursing electricity. Tender synths ricochet and heavily filtered wind turbines spin and shuffle, before tactile rhythms rip through ‘Is U’ with clips of 2018 Bleep Album of the Year artist Tirzah’s ‘Gladly’ folded in like vocal origami. Of course, we can't forget to mention 'So U Kno', with pneumatic beats hitting hard and spewing out steam, vocals looped to hypnotising effect, and a plunging monolithic bassline that makes this track a DJ set staple.

Overmono’s debut album is “really a letter of love to the journey so far”, marking a milestone in their career that is well worth the wait as the continued evolution of their raw club sounds electrify all senses.