Getting Over Overmono
The best reviewed electronic album of the year so far is also...the dullest?
Congrats on reading Edition 37 of Laughing Stock, which sees Rich Walker lament the lack of variety in electronic music that the public at large are exposed to…
Last week LS was visiting Paris. We took in the sights, ate our body weight in bread, pastry and cheese, mainlined red wine, and nipped into the Centre Pompidou to witness the premiere of a ‘new’ Daft Punk video. On our last evening we attended the first of two 15th birthday shows for the brilliant label PAN, taking place at the beautiful Bourse de Commerce, a building in the centre of Paris originating around 1763 (although not in its current, be-domed beauty until around 1889). We’re huge fans of PAN here, one of the few labels where we’ll listen to pretty much anything they release knowing that the vast majority of it is going to appeal. In the last few months alone they’ve put out boundary pushing LPs from Tzusing, upsammy, Honour, Heith, and Marina Herlop amongst others, each one revealing something new, something exciting to get your ears around from the vast range of genres within ‘electronic music’. Honour were one of the acts present at the PAN show, alongside Puce Mary, Amnesia Scanner and Freeka Tet, and the brilliant Crystallmess, fresh from her star turn at the much dissected Frank Ocean Coachella show. The night was electric, starting with the hazy workings of Honour, through pummeling turns from Puce Mary and Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet (remember your earplugs kids!), before the final joyous set from Crystallmess. All four acts brought something thrillingly new to the ears of the Y2K x The Matrix dressed crowd, all played out at cochlea punishing sound levels that made the beats reverberate through our very being, in the best possible way. We left elated, giddy at the prospect of what electronic music can still deliver, how it can still delight us with something exhilarating after all these years.
The following morning we do what LS does every Friday morning: download all the new releases we think worth listening to and make our first trawl through it. We get inspiration from plenty of places for what we should try out. Emails from the likes of Boomkat and Bleep, Stereogum’s regular Tuesday roundup of what’s coming pinned to their ‘Album of the Week’ articles, the exceptional Signal to Noise playlist on Apple Music (seriously, who complies this? Excellent work), the swathes of people we follow on Twitter and Instagram who we trust implicitly, friends, all contributing to what we’re going to put through our ears each week. Despite naysayers decrying that it’s harder than ever to discover new music, it genuinely has never been easier; find some sources you trust, listen to what they have to recommend, download them to your shiny device. Job done. This week we found gems from Lucy Liyou, Midwife & Vyva Melinkoyla, Natural Wonder Beauty Concept, and Shell Company. Yet the one most people were talking about like it was the saviour of electronic music was the debut album from Overmono, Good Lies.
Don’t get us wrong, we’ve been fans of most of the Russell brothers' output to date. Their Cash Romantic and Everything U Need EPs were great, mixing a shed load of London electronic influences into something that sounded instantly familiar but not derivative or nostalgic. Their work with mentor Joy Orbison as Joy Overmono produced two of the standout tracks of 2019 in ‘Bromley’ and ‘Still Moving’, the former a masterclass in low key repetitive release, the latter an oddball, squelchy, weirdo jam, full of obtuse sounds that would still sound ace on a dancefloor. There was an experimental edge to Overmono in and amongst the stone cold bangers (the off-kilter Gfortune is still a highlight), and it made for an exciting, always intriguing listen. Good Lies in comparison sounds flat and lifeless, the joy sucked out of electronic music leaving only broadsheet courting tastefully considered precision. It’s music that will sound fine at yer mate’s summer BBQ, unobtrusive in the background, no one asking for an ID on the tracks as they playout anonymously through the smoke streaked atmosphere.
The people it’s designed for, Americans, middle class broadsheet readers who are apparently struggling in this age of abundance to find something new, are lapping it up. The Guardian and The Observer gave it 4 and 5 stars respectively (is Alexis Petridis up for retirement soon?); the Americans are giddy for its seeming homage to all things UK rave (whilst still sounding new!), with Pitchfork giving it 7.7 and Stereogum bestowing upon it their album of the week; NME are comparing them to Burial (vocal snatches on crackly beats!). It’s not that it’s a poor album, it’s definitely a very well put together LP, and ‘Is U’ still bangs; the issue is more that this is what is being pushed onto the public, those who apparently struggle to engage with endless choice of new releases, as a year-defining electronic release when it’s one of the flattest, backwards looking dance records to come out in 2023 so far.
On the flipside, under the radar UK electronic music is in rude health, with a lot of the best releases emanating from the North. Acts we (and many others) have trumpeted across LS are making electronic music that sounds like nothing else, genuinely thrilling new stuff that blows our minds repeatedly. You know the list, it includes the likes of aya, Blackhaine, Rainy Miller, Iceboy Violet, Clemency, Romance, Finn, BFTT, Chunky, Sockethead, Michael J Blood, Rat Heart, Space Afrika, and South Londoners like Coby Sey, Mica Levi, Alpha Maid, Dean Blunt, Brother May, Klein etc etc ad infinitum. It’s music largely ignored in the press/websites of bigger publications, outside of the odd mention in a Face, Crack or Vice piece, and we’re 98% sure it doesn’t make the big Spotify discovery playlists. Wouldn’t it be great if publications with large readerships did a bit more digging to unearth what’s actually at the cutting edge of UK electronic music, instead of pushing out the insipid major label fayre acting as boundary pushing? Wouldn’t it be great if Spotify made more effort to surface the incredible stuff being made across the country not on major labels? I know, I know, it’s easy for us to say, but it would be even easier for some of the big players to shine a spotlight on stuff that their own writers are saying the public struggle to find.
I don’t blame Overmono for making a safe album that has captured the imagination of the unimaginative mainstream press. I wish them all the best; I reckon they’ve got something really interesting in them, and might one day release a twisted album of forward thinking beats. It’s time that other electronic material surfaced more regularly, and is championed outside of the brilliant places that already shout about it. There doesn’t need to be another one off article about how influential The White Hotel is (although yes I would read it in a ‘hook it to my veins’ fashion), what’s needed is regular updates on the music coming out of it. Review the new Michael J Blood x Rat Heart release; go and see aya live and wax lyrical about how mind-melting they are; stick the joyous new Finn & Private Joy track on a major playlist. If your readers and listeners feel they are struggling to find great new music, then put it in front of them regularly, not just in a week dedicated to saying why people find it difficult to discover. Just please, no more 5 star reviews of brothers making template dance tracks.
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