Dan Hillier
Forming within the chimerical, neon illuminated confines of the outsider electronica scene, the completely anonymous pact came into being due to a shared love of code, algorithmics and all things digitally automated. It was this shared love that saw the genesis of Overrider as an entity, with the duo originally creating music via live-coding experiments, algorithms, and to an extent, perceiving unicode in a way any other musician would read translational sheet music. Yes, it’s certainly a unique and borderline incomprehensible approach, but it was one that served as the primary crux of their initial EPs from last year. Respectively titled Cyc/er and Re:ntegration, these two extended plays where fantastic and wholly unique records that established their penchant for expressing the incomputable nature of human existence through calculated beats and a hacker aesthetic. But yet, the band are pulling a curve with their more traditionally composed LP debut titled The City Eats The Stranger // The Sky Eats The City.
Releasing August 6th independently, this record see’s the band departing from their themes of isolated introspection and compositions of semi-random beats in order to painstakingly create a record of sci-fi scope that’s been crafted purely by hand. This organic approach has resulted in a record that’s simply full of intricate detail, nuance and almost endless amounts of deeply textured layers. It’s also a body of work that see’s the band naturally doubling down on their breakcore, shoegaze, glitch and even contemporary junglist tendencies, as well as their futuristic dystopian vibe.
Opener ‘w_-br=_k=r’, showcases, especially in the way it seizes into life in the way a fatally virus ridden virtual computer would be booted up. Confident in it’s execution and fully immersive with it’s shifting soundscape of frenzied riffs, glitched beats and warbled choirs of vocal samples, the track instantly interjects you into the gritty futuristic city of squalor and hedonism this album feels like it was cultivated from. Bolstered by the crawling and creeping following track ‘th= k-ck’, a track that feels like the inner monologue of an AI being corrupted, it’s nigh on impossible not to visualise scenes of urbanist excess from media such as Blade Runner, Akira and Ghost In The Shell when listening to this. There’s a very palpable neo-noir feel to this record, one that’s viscerally animated in it’s frantic turbulence.
Following on from the martial violent finesse of ‘S_nj_mm=r’ and the explosive breakbeat clashes of ‘sys=m cr_sh’ – the record’s most chaotic offering – the album’s theme becomes apparent. Like all good albums that understand the long play purpose, The City Eats The Sky // The Sky Eats The City has a running theme that is expressed by a shifting mood, with the record harbouring an increasingly dissonant atmosphere that represents the creeping nature of existentialist dread and our natural fear of the unknown. As evident in the Year Zero era Nine Inch Nails nature of ‘br=_ch’, the overabundant use of vocal samples utilised here does a fantastic job in narrating this, as it appears the band have taken samples from an entire library of media to narrate the downfall of a collective mindset becoming aware of it’s decay. It’s the second side of this record that see’s the urbanist chaos of the first half being compounded and defragged, with a blanketing sense of dread coating the bombastic glitching beats within.
But even with this record being a slight departure from the band’s slightly meditative post-rock speckled EP’s of last year, there’s still bountiful nods towards the band’s roots. Select musical tidbits, loops, riffs and motifs have been surgically removed from their previous work and implanted into the record with careful consideration, providing a dynamic connection between the bodies of work. But perhaps the most obvious connection to their work from 2020 is the creative inclusions from Cleft’s John Simm and Tom Peters of Alpha Male Tea Party. Simm once again has done an incredible job of providing some agitated percussion on a number of tracks and Peters role in mastering has given the record a tangible aura, one that laminates the endless textures that composes Overrider’s debut.
In all, even with Overrider straying from the approach that made them completely unique even within the fervent experimentism of the underground electronica scene, the band have only reinforced their reputation as one of the most promising bands within the field with this record. The City Eats The Stranger // The Sky Eats The City is an all-embracing and diverse soundscape that feels detached from reality yet culturally relevant in it’s labyrinthine layers of chaos, excess and dread. Granted, some may feel the unrelenting breakbeat nature of some of the tracks present are too far removed from the band’s originally contemplative nature, but regardless, this is a strikingly detailed record of raving immersion and vivid escapism.