A Closer Listen
A global pandemic has just begun ~ let’s start a band! And let’s make the music so bombastic, so catchy, so clubworthy that people will smile and maybe dance and forget all about their troubles for as long as the music plays. This is Overrider, whose first single was released in March 2020 and who have gone on a tear since then, with numerous singles, EPs, an album and now a “surprise” EP.
The easy comparison is to 65daysofstatic, due to the combination of guitars and breakbeats. But one might also think of Linkin Park, or Dom and Roland, or even TCR’s nu skool breaks. Last year’s output, culminating in cyc|er, focused on the rock end of the spectrum, but this year the beats have increased, a melding of live drums, generative programming and an excess of energy. One can hear the excitement building in “t=rm:n_t:_n sh_ck” and “=nd cr=d:ts,” the closing tracks of the city eats the stranger//the sky eats the city, an album accompanied by a graphic novel, released only last month. But the band was not done yet ~ there were too many ideas left on the cutting room floor.
And thus the EP, again with a bonus track not even mentioned on the Bandcamp page (in case you were wondering where to find “”=nd cr=d:ts”). kill -9 yr idols is a potpourri of riffs and beats, an incredible set to take for a drive, a propulsive beast that never needs a pit stop. This time the EP starts with the hidden track, which is extremely rare, as a narrator speaks of “invisible planes and barriers.” The EP is concerned with the nooks and crannies of computer programs, drawing a line to physical structures. What lies between the zeroes and the ones? Is it intentional that the “hidden” track is Track 01? We believe so. Here come those riffs and drums, leading straight to “>_”, which mysteriously downloads without the “>”.
Overrider is a well-chosen name, as it says override (as in a program) but implies overwriting as well. These tracks and pieces of tracks were scraped from the floor, reassembled, hammered, displaced, replaced, glued and layered. There’s no telling which parts of the music are live and which are programmed. It’s wonderful to hear those nu skool breaks again (for those unfamiliar, think a slower version of jungle ~ which itself appears in the lead single that is almost the title track but is missing the “i”. The synths go screaming speaker to speaker as the drums stop and start and shift, or perhaps shift-alt-delete. The track’s huge finale is a floor filler.
On “crypt0)))cor3,” a pop song, a rock song and a drum ‘n’ bass song walk into a bar and pick a fight. By the end notes, they are all drinking together. Then it’s time for repeated riffs, a call-and-response ending in a pulled plug. Finally, “exit 1” (one of the easier tracks to request on air) speaks of installing literal exits, serves as an exit itself, and refers to the city beyond the exit. But since the exit includes loops from prior works, one wonders if the exit is final, or a Calvino labyrinth. We suspect that the architects are already at work redesigning this building. (Richard Allen)
Thu Sep 09 00:01:25 GMT 2021