At first glance mysterious Manchester based producer Overrider may find a comfortable place amongst countless other electronic music creators, with groovy breaks and R&B inspired samples putting themselves in the spotlight from the get-go. On closer inspection however, sophomore album Sparse Vector has more in common with artists like Three Trapped Tigers or Adebisi Shank than any of the landfill EDM DJs that pollute the UK’s nightclubs.
While most of the post/math-rock crowd would typically turn their noses up at a producer such as Overrider, the same fans would be thrilled to hear of former Cleft drummer John Simm’s involvement in the project. Mashing together fast-paced, glitchy breakcore with math rock and shoegaze, tracks like opener ‘Tokyo 3’ give both Overrider and Simm space to explore with tight percussion cutting through chunky distorted guitars and scratchy, futuristic synths. Marking themselves as the thinking man’s electronic music producer, Overrider embraces their nerdier side while still providing some incredibly danceable beats.
Referencing everything from The Mars Volta to Atari Teenage Riot to DJ Hazard, Overrider fly through their ten tracks of progressive, jagged guitar-driven beats without any regard for ordinary genre conventions. Tracks like ‘Black Wings’ and ‘Fracture’ lean into some of the project’s more aggressive tendencies, relying on brutal distorted guitars mixed in with the rapid drums and eclectic samples. Despite sharing plenty of sounds with underground raves and seedy clubs, Sparse Vector would far sooner find an audience at Arctangent than at Boomtown.
While Sparse Vector is overall an extremely ambitious affair, Overrider does take some time to strip things down and take a break from the project’s rapid-fire launching of ideas. The track ‘Crisis’ takes a surprisingly straightforward approach, building itself around a winding lead guitar line and sub-100 BPM drum groove whereas ‘Turn The Static Up’ reaches a similarly downbeat outcome via punchy 90s hip-hop style percussion and sporadic, chunky guitar lines without losing any of the glitchy, experimental energy of the rest of the album. Overrider feels like the kind of producer who could be locked in a room with a collection of obscure 7 inch records and a rusted Squier guitar and still deliver the same twitchy, driving mashup of mathy riffs and volatile beats, Sparse Vector shows their wide range without any restrictions.
Closing track ‘Shattered’ is by far the album’s most bold and expansive, clocking in at just under nine minutes of focused sonic exploration. Keeping up Overrider’s level of dense experimentation for this amount of time should be worthy of praise in itself, the fact that ‘Shattered’ manages to cram the album’s aggressively inquisitive thesis into a track this far-reaching and joyous should earn Sparse Vector a slot on every experimental music fan’s shelf. While Overrider’s three to four minute tracks squeeze in an impressive amount of sonic investigation it’s nothing short of a marvel that they’re able to sustain the same level of experimentation over three times that long.
While your typical experimental music fan is likely to shun anything this close to EDM, Overrider proves that there’s a place on the dancefloor for even the nerdiest math-rock fan. Flinging together lightning fast breakbeats, hefty distorted guitar riffs and choppy samples, Sparse Vector stands out as one of the year’s most eclectic and memorable releases.