Overmono - Arla II EP

Pitchfork 74

Overmono is the collaborative effort of Tom and Ed Russell, UK techno’s foremost biological (as opposed to chemical) brothers. For the last half-decade, they’ve worked under several aliases—Tom most prominently as Truss and MPIA3, Ed as Tessela—and have been among a small cadre of producers to emerge from the London bass scene with fresh takes on their country’s lineage of dark, grimy techno. Gear savvy, club-focused, and deceptively playful, this informal group—which also includes Blawan, Untold, and Pariah, among others—took the industrial muscle of Surgeon, Regis, and the Downwards label and added a wink to the grimace.

Arla II is the siblings’ second EP as Overmono, following last year’s Arla and a track as TR / ER in 2012. They’ve used the project to shift their focus away from club-friendly 4/4 kicks to tracks with looser architectures, favoring whirring percussion and yelping vocal samples. In both tone and construction, these Overmono tracks seem informed by shadowy mid-90s rave music and the eerie IDM it mutated into.

The opening “O-Coast” (which, coincidentally or not, shares a name with a popular new synthesizer) sounds like a Boards of Canada track on two hyperactive mitzis and with a busted ankle, whisking childlike vocal abstractions into a coiling synth line. Subby kick drums sit behind the mix, more rumble than rhythm. It’s a potent, tricky concoction that is notable for its lack of utility: too abstract and inattentive for the dance, too manic and paranoid for the comedown. Arla II’s four primary tracks (it contains two short interludes as well) all mostly function in this manner. “Telephax 030” is particularly stressful, two vocal samples disagreeing against a hissy, reverberating cymbal—like a domestic argument and the resultant shattered window, looped in perpetuity.

“16 Steps” is Overmono’s finest piece yet, a shuffling thicket of a breakbeat and oxidized utterances set over foghorn bass blasts. It’s over before your feet or your stomach figure out how to handle it, a metallic taste left on your tongue. The closing “Powder Dry,” with its aching pads, feels sentimental and plodding in contrast, the only time Arla II feels easy for either the artists or the listeners. Still, this represents a step forward for the Russell brothers. These tracks feel gutsy and modern even when their influences and lineage are apparent, and they conjure paranoia and anger without resorting to hissy industrial aggression. Tom and Ed plan to perform these pieces as part of a live show, and that seems like an ideal way to experience this music: with a loud, blasting club for these loud, confounding tracks.