Phase Fatale

Introjection

NR presents Track Etymology, the textual corollary to nr.world’s exploration of contemporary soundscapes: A series of short interviews delving in the processes and backstories behind the releases premiered on nr.world’s dedicated platform.

Hello Hayden! It’s a pleasure being in conversation with you. How are you feeling about the release? 

With this record, I pushed forward my techno side reflecting the direction I’ve been heading towards the past few years, where I want to take myself and the label. I explored new production methods like broken beats and using more digital instruments to create a future leaning dance floor sound. 

It seems that lately you have been dedicating yourself a lot to the production-side of your practice. Last year, it had been 5 years since your last solo EP, and now we’re already getting Love is Destructive. What changed? did you feel the need to build more upon your personal take on music and get in a more narrative mood? 

I never really stopped producing. I also released my last album in 2022 and the one previous on Ostgut Ton in 2020, combined with many collabs, VAs, and remixes. So while there was a gap in EPs, there was never a gap in the music. However, I definitely enjoy working on a more dance floor 12” again as it’s more concise and to the point, serving the purpose to work in the club. I feel like I needed to create my take on current techno elements used and push it forward with this EP which makes more sense in this format. 

‘Ambivalence’, ‘Love is destructive’, ‘Introjection’ – Titles of your new production seem to be quite closely thematically linked. How do these titles reflect the conceptual landscape of the album, and what narrative or emotional journey do you aim to guide listeners through with each? 

These titles link to a journey of love lost and love found. I believe uploading the music with meaningful titles combined with the artwork provides a more cohesive package for the record itself. But it’s open to the listener’s interpretation at their will. 

What were the influences and core elements that have shaped your project, and how do they intersect with your journey as a DJ and producer? 

The main influence is the cross-pollination of producers such as Regis, Silent Servant and Function and my roots in guitar music like My Bloody Valentine, Godflesh and The Cure. What I like in these bands is the combination of harsh noise with a musical structure palatable to a larger audience. This balance I also try to achieve in my own music.

«In techno in general, I look for this balance of sonic experimentation and boundary pushing which is all locked in by repetitious and danceable rhythms. The heaviness is subliminally inserted into the music itself.»

The relationship between sound and embodiment has been a recurring theme in your work, with references to the corporeal experience of rhythm and resonance. How do you explore the tactile dimensions of sound in your compositions –What is your relationship with audience perception, and how does your knowledge of audience response to tracks inform your compositional process? 

When producing club music, I always imagine how it works on a dance floor I’m familiar with such as Berghain, and it’s usually inspired by moments performing or dancing there. I look to accentuating different frequencies as means of controlling the body while also keeping the spectrum well-balanced. There is only a finite amount to store within the music, and it’s also important not to overdo it. In terms of composition, I arrange with the notion that the tracks are used within a DJ set. So they are composed in such a way that the changes hit at the right time creating more drama in the mix. 

As an artist deeply embedded in the underground electronic music scene, you occupy a unique position at the intersection of countercultural resistance and mainstream appropriation. How do you navigate the tension between subcultural authenticity and commercial viability, and what strategies do you employ to maintain artistic autonomy while engaging with broader audiences? 

I grew up playing in post-punk and synthwave bands so that’s my background. I always look for new sounds in those worlds and combine them together in my techno sets as well as carry that influence into my production. I think it’s important to still acknowledge how these sometimes seemingly disparate genres are actually very connected since their beginnings and subconsciously weave that notion together in sets. I listen to myself in how I want to approach my music and only work with likeminded labels and artists who I connect with in their approach rather than being influenced by temporary trends that urge others to change their sound at a whim. 

This record is dedicated to Silent Servant, your mentor. Grief finds expression in various artistic forms, including music. In techno, a genre often associated with its pulsating rhythms and immersive sonic landscapes, the exploration of emotions like grief may seem unconventional. However, some artists have managed to infuse their music with a sense of melancholy, loss, and introspection. How do you perceive the role of grief in techno music, and how do you approach incorporating or evoking such emotions in your own compositions? 

Juan made the artwork for this record, and I think it’s probably one of the last ones he made. We never had a chance to talk about the new technique he used for it even. It makes the whole record combined with the titles and images of roses and cold machinery quite mournful. So many steps and movements of my production, DJing and music in general are somehow connected to Juan so it was very heavy to go through with this release to say the least. Even in techno, it’s possible to make room for grief because the genre lends itself to create other worlds and paint a picture of an alternate reality with the use of certain atmospheres and melancholic melodies taking the listener to another dimension to reconcile with it. 

In the era of algorithmic curation and streaming platforms, the role of the DJ as a curator and tastemaker is evolving. How do you perceive the evolving nature of DJ culture, and what strategies do you employ to maintain a distinct artistic voice and ensure your creative output remains innovative and boundary-pushing? 

It’s true that more than ever people look to who the DJ is and what defines them beyond just their music. Which on one hand I understand, as someone more into bands, usually the image (or lack thereof) played a role into how we perceive their music whether that was through artwork, photos, music videos or performances on stage. So I think the same can be applied to techno as it evolves. On the other hand, what should still remain most important is the DJ’s selection and their ability to technically mix them together while reading the vibe of the space they’re in. I’m a musician because it is the creative way to express myself so it inherently stays true to me, while I constantly search for new or old sounds to inspire me and broaden my sonic palette. 

The notion of «genre» in electronic music is both a unifying force and a constraining factor, often shaping audience expectations and critical reception. How do you negotiate the boundaries of genre in your own work, and to what extent do you see yourself as a boundary-crossing artist pushing the limits of categorization? 

Unfortunately, some people like to cast artists into one genre and leave them there, thinking categorically, no matter if they evolve, instead of just listening and updating their preconceptions. I’ve always defined my project as techno but perhaps with different influences, while others try to pigeonhole my sound based on my background or what other artists around me think to play. I think the best way to redefine and push the limits is just to constantly showcase your sound with releases and sets, hence why I’ve been saying ‘techno’ all the time like a broken record. 

Your label BITE has been instrumental in showcasing emerging talent and pushing the boundaries of experimental techno. How do you envision the role of independent labels in shaping the future landscape of electronic music, and what criteria do you use to identify artists who embody the ethos of innovation and experimentation? 

Labels play an important role in defining their own aesthetic in music through the sound as well as its visual concept and the way they present their art to listeners. I want to show my connection to dance music and what I find cool and interesting while hopefully building up new artists in who I believe. When releasing someone, I usually listen if their music is also influenced by genres outside of techno itself and somehow combines it all together into a sound that is definitively them, so that one could tell it’s them in a blind listen. 

I wanted to close on a lighter note..I want to peep a bit behind the curtain: How do you approach the creative process when producing new tracks? Do you have any specific rituals or routines? 

I usually get an idea while DJing or just listening to music for a song I want to make, whether it’s a sequence, rhythm, melody or just a general mood or style. Then I translate that idea in my head to reality with either hardware or software which usually somehow changes or evolves in that process. Because I’m on the road so much now, I’m learning new ways to work on the computer but still retain the spontaneity and rawness of the hardware I’m used to working with all these years. But this learning process is cool because it lends itself to new sounds and methods. The most difficult part is understanding when the track is finally finished, to stop playing around with it, and let it go. That all comes from just doing it over and over again. 

Team

Interview · Andrea Bratta
Artwork · Silent Editions
Photography · Shuto
Pre-order the digital album here
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Tadleeh

Seekers

NR presents Track Etymology, the textual corollary to nr.world’s exploration of contemporary soundscapes: A series of short interviews delving in the processes and backstories behind the releases premiered on nr.world’s dedicated platform.

Hi Hazina! Should we back up a little bit? When did you first get in touch with music?

I started with music when I was young. In my house, we always had music playing. I really liked how music could affect people. I started learning guitar when I was seven. Playing an instrument let me express myself in new ways. I loved practicing, trying new music styles, and making my own songs.

Now I’m into electronic music. I really like old hip hop, liquid, and drum n’ bass. I got my first vinyl, a Liquid mixtape, from a market in Camden Town.

I read about your background in Cinema Studies, and of your fascination with the evolution of both diegetic and non- diegetic sound in film. How does this translate in your writing process?

When I write, I listen for sounds in my scenes just like I do for the visuals. I think about the noises in a quiet forest or a busy city to make my stories feel real. I want to make readers feel like they are really in the world of my stories. I am excited to keep using these ideas in my work and to find new ways to connect with readers both in their minds and hearts. The movie style is in ‘Lone’ and will be in my next work too. It’s my way of making things. The cinematic field is present in ‘Lone’ and it will be present in my next work as well. It’s an automatic composing style from my side. 

What was the overarching narrative behind your new record, ‘LONE’?

‘LONE’ is a musical journey that delves into the depths of introspection, exploring the intricacies of solitude and the profound moments of clarity that arise from it. Each track is a chapter in the story of a solitary individual navigating the complexities of their inner world, grappling with introspection, and ultimately finding solace in self-awareness.

I’ve started composing it during 2020, just one year after my debut release Ep as my new moniker Tadleeh. The album begins with a sense of isolation and uncertainty, reflecting the protagonist’s journey into the unknown. As the narrative unfolds, themes of resilience, growth, and empowerment emerge, driving the protagonist to confront their fears and embrace their true self. 

Speaking of diegetic and non-diegetic..It’s interesting how context determines the reception of music. A record like ‘LONE’ could work in several frameworks. During your career you held numerous residencies in radios, played in clubs.. In which settings do you mostly present your music? Does the context influence your presentation?

I’m used to play my EPs, former productions and album during my live performances. My presence in Radio is connected to dj sphere, that I also love a lot! During my entire career I did both, spacing between club events, festival, radio show or residency as well as galleries. I don’t think my personal works fit well in a proper club, where I actually prefer to dj. ‘LONE’ sounds better in an intimate place. 

Yours is an extremely varied and experimental career — different labels, different medius, different settings. How did you approach ‘LONE’, considering it is your first LP? Is it a crystallization of your journey up until this point as an artist?

I started making music when I was a teenager, and starting my very first project Petit Singe in 2013, releasing on Haunter Records (Milan). From that point on i’ve released many different  works in many different support (12’’ vinyl, 7’’, tape etc).

Approaching my first LP was a deeply introspective and transformative process. I saw it as an opportunity to distill the essence of my artistic evolution and present a cohesive narrative that reflects the multifaceted experiences and influences that have shaped my musical identity. I’m already processing some new work for a new album. 

As per Sarah Thornton, club culture presents “Three principal, overarching distinctions which can be briefly designated as: the authentic versus the phony, the ‘hip’ versus the ‘mainstream’, and the ‘underground’ versus ‘the media.” This was in her seminal book “Club Cultures”. The year was 1995. I often ask producers and DJs their perspective on the contemporary clubbing landscape. You were the creative mind behind the now retired, forward-thinking events series Sine Confine in Milan, so I assume you had a first-hand experience of how these categories interacted in a unique setting such as the one you were curating. Do you feel those distinctions are a bit outdated or do they stand the test of time?

I believe that the experiences of club culture cited by Sarah Thornton can be all present, only in part, or even all absent even if we are talking about the same event or context. As a DJ and as a curator of musical events – therefore as a «victim» and «perpetrator» -, I can honestly say that the «underground» aspect is the most questionable and difficult to respect. The public doesn’t trust: they always need digital context to ensure the “who, how and why” of a specific event. Curators themselves don’t have many sponsorship choices these days, other than the obvious one on social media.

These mechanisms, in my opinion, arise from a public that is absolutely wary of what it doesn’t know, of being surrounded by «offline» people. Unfortunately I think that the artistic proposal is downgraded.

Neither on the part of the organisers nor on the part of the participants is there a desire to be false, not to be fashionable or not to be underground enough. But I think that this discussion can be broadened to an anthropological, rather than musical, in-depth analysis. They are status quos that human beings have, regardless of club culture. Sine Confine – which is not completely finished, I hope – had – and has – the same purpose as any other organisation: to enhance the work of artists who consider themselves in line with their own tastes.

The underground scene often has difficulty finding funding, and is forced to finance itself. Those who move in this field often know the risks, in terms of turnout and economics. And this is where social media comes in handy. So, who is right and who is wrong? The ordinary citizens who do not finance niche events, or the organisers themselves who, for fear of losing out financially, rely on mainstream social media? It is a war that is too deep-rooted and sees many active participants: the public, organisers, urban spaces, institutions, financiers…

As for my personal Sine Confine project, I hope that one day it can restart and become operational again, far from the consolidated sexist and chauvinist gazes in this country.

Sine Confine was an “art and music platform.” You also produce sound-based installations and commissions, most recently for Munich’s Haus der Kunst —there’s a clear trans-disciplinary component to your practice, could elaborate a bit on that?

Yes, I think that an artist can flush out art everywhere, in every discipline and places. 

I’m really happy of being part of Tune program – curated by Sarah Miles -. My music is absolutely open to any spaces and situations. Me personally, I love being involved in different artistic contest: curating (Sine Confine), listening, viewing… I love to merge multiple opportunities and people.  

Your music feels heartfelt but liminal..It has this intimate but detached feeling to it, almost like an invitation to enter a conversation but only to be left on its doorstep, stuck between its reflexive moments and sonic implosions. How is your relationship with the listener? Is it something you think of while composing?

I want to make songs that feel close and personal, using heart songs and thoughtful music to bring people into the feelings of the songs. The in-between feeling you talked about is what I aim for, making a place that is both close and wide, known but also mysterious. I do think about how people will feel and connect with the music when I write it. But, I focus on sharing my own feelings, experiences, and creative drive in an honest way. I think that if I stay true to my own vision and am open in my expression, I can make music that deeply connects with others. I hope to evoke emotions, provoke thought, and inspire introspection in those who choose to journey with me through my music.

There’s this quote I obsess over by James Joyce, it was part of an essay on Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, “This music smells like sex.” I think it sums up perfectly the drama’s themes and overall sensorial experience. We often tend to associate music to visual metaphors, but I think smell is an underrated sense —What would your music smell like?

Wow! I didn’t know about this particular Joyce’s quote, and I have to say that I definitely agree, even if I never thought about this interesting connection between them. I mean, smell is also proper of music. And come to think of it, I have a certain smell in my mind linked to the theatre halls. The seats, the main wood stage, the “waiting smell” for the show to start. 

That being said, since I’ve never deeply reflected about this, I’d rashly associate my music with the odor that’s in the air when something has been set on fire. 

Interview · Andrea Bratta
Artwork · Visio
Pre-order the digital album here
Tadleeh will be performing on April 5th at Rewire Festival. Find out more here.
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Violent Magic Orchestra

WARP

NR presents Soundsights, Track Etymology’s sister column: An inquiry into the convergence between sound, its visual expressions, investigating music’s intrinsically visual narrative quality.

Hello guys, thank you for being here, it must be pretty late now in Japan. How are you feeling about the upcoming release? It is your first LP since 2016! It’s been quite a journey! Global tours, several collaborations, a lot of experimentation. There is this restless component to your work, always evolving and shifting both sonically and conceptually. Is this record your way of crystallizing what you’ve been up to these last 8 years? What made you finally settle down?

Our music has always flirted with genre-bending, but for this record in particular, we aimed to incorporate various genres into our sound more than ever. Perhaps what has changed the most is that this time, we aimed to capture what we think is the essence of our live shows, rather than focusing on a specific sound, having toured a lot since the release of our previous album —Our main inspiration for this record stems from physicality and the ways our audience interacts in a live setting with our sound. Of course, Techno and Black Metal are still our two sonic compasses, but this time we drew from a wider plethora of music genres like hardcore, noise, and industrial. It is also the first record where we have a female lead vocalist, Zastar, the last member to join us!

The experiential referentiality of your music is definitely felt in the new record, and its presence makes even more sense considering that you describe yourselves as a performance art collective. I was listening to Warp while watching the visuals Rafael Bicalho created for it, and I almost felt like I was in a 3.0 musical drama. There is a sort of lingering quality to it, those almost fading vocals mixed with the track’s physicality and the alternating moments of calm and soaring. It was as if I was listening to source music for a film. What was the concept behind it? Is it one act of a longer narrative that continues throughout the whole record?

Self-consciousness is definitely a recurrent theme throughout the record, at least in its narrative aspects. In «Warp,» we depicted Zastar swimming in an abstract, undefined space, searching for objects to anchor her sense of reality and body. The goal we had in mind was to convey the feeling of a mind and body that had been separated and are now attempting to reunite in a quest to reinstate a feeling of individual wholeness. Rafael is one of the many visual artists we collaborate with; it is very important to us working with these incredible artists who help us give a visual body to our ideas.

I am very curious about the artistic direction of the release. There is an incredible emphasis on the aesthetic component of all your projects, your live gigs, the way you communicate online —All these visual elements seem to form a unicum with your sound, and, as you said, you collaborate a lot in order to achieve it. What fuels this curatorial approach that you have?

We always check Instagram! Scrolling, exploring all the time. We usually brainstorm a lot so that very precise images of what we want form in our minds. Those will then inform our research, and down the rabbit hole we go. The same thing applies to our collaboration with other musicians; we want to keep aesthetics and sonics parallel, informed by the same general idea.

You describe VMO as a multimedia performance art project. How do you approach creation? Does music come first or Is it about feeling and aesthetic rather than songwriting?

We operate precisely as an art collective, only our media is primarily music, trying to aggregate conceptual structures to sonic palettes. Visual and music, concepts and sounds. Everything usually starts with a visual idea of what we want to portray, and then from there, we work it into a sound and choose the people to work with on that overarching concept, musically and visually.

Interesting. Considering the multitude of influences you have and the collaborative nature of VMO, how do you function as a collective?

We work, well..collectively! [they laugh.] We usually gather inspiration from a variety of sources, books, poetry, films, music, nature..anything really. K, who functions as a sort of “chief curator” explains his influences and what he wants to do to all of us and then we work together to achieve the final result we want to go for.

You mentioned movies, literature, poetry. What were some of the extra-musical references for this particular record? 

Each of us has his own individual inspiration, of course; we have a lot of different interests and media, drawing from various inspirations that manifest in our work. There are numerous histories occurring around the world all the time. For instance, Black Metal is influenced by Christianity, Afrofuturism is deeply ingrained in Detroit Techno —Different histories influence each other and are simultaneously distant yet close. Cross-pollination might very well be another of the main themes of the record. Think of «Stranger Things’ ‘; An incredibly pop show presenting a clear 80s aura, but mixing it with horror tropes in a quotational yet twisted manner.

There’s an almost reassembled-collage quality to how you operate, exploring sonic dichotomies, musical and visual tropes, featuring elements  that are at the same time disorienting but familiar —Yours is an almost unheimlich sound. How do you manage to keep all these different inputs together in a coherent result?

In a sense, it’s almost complete experimentation, and there’s a lot of trial and error. We take the time that we need to create something we believe its worthwhile, mixing focused work and abstraction. We try to convey abstract idea in precise sonic and visual coordinates, mixing the two up from time to time.

Another very important element in your work is saturation, both musically and visually. Your music challenges the listener, and I mean this in the best possible way. What made you gravitate towards such a confrontational sound?

We always were drawn to the physicality of certain music genres. Metal, gabber, techno: It’s kind of a natural thing for us to seek abstract ideas expressed through “violent” music. It is what we have always liked as listeners and artists. 

Before we say goodbye, I wanted to ask: What’s a VMO live experience? Prepare us for the upcoming world tour!

We aim to create an environment that everyone can enjoy, almost like a theme park. However, we also improvise a lot, as every crowd is different and reacts differently, and we always try to go with the flow. It’s curious that we have this very, at times, complicated sound. However, what we want is to present and offer our performances to audiences in the most accommodating way possible. We aim to provide people with the easiest way possible for them to enjoy the experience itself.

Interview · Andrea Bratta
Photography (in order of appearance) · Genki Arata and Tatsuya Higuchi
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Mumdance

In Love Again

NR presents Track Etymology, the textual corollary to nr.world’s exploration of contemporary soundscapes: A series of short interviews delving in the processes and backstories behind the releases premiered on nr.world’s dedicated platform.

In Love Again and Five Years feel quintessential Mumdance but at the same time headed towards new territories. Listening to the tracks I had two reactions: Bobbing my head as a timid attempt to dance in the studio I was in, and reflecting on how the UK sound continuum, something you have been rightfully associated with, is intrinsically hybrid and continuously moving. You are now almost 15 years in the game, a veteran, if I might say so, but you continue to experiment and evolve your body of work. You have been close to it in so many ways throughout more than a decade: What would a Mumdance definition of the UK sound be?

I’m happy you enjoyed the music. It’s actually been quite a challenge to wrap my head around how to make happier, more optimistic tracks and incorporate them into something that matches my aesthetic. But that is part of the journey – I’m glad you picked up on the fact that I have always tried to evolve and challenge myself with every release. I’ve never really sat down and thought about the reason why, apart from it just always felt like the natural thing to do. But as I sit here and think deeply about it, it amuses me to realise it’s actually something that I latched onto at a very young age from my parents talking about Madonna and how she always reinvented herself, which as an idea fascinated me. I think constantly experimenting with my sound has been something that overall has created challenges  career-wise, as a lot of people haven’t really known where to ‘place’ me. But at the same time, I feel happy that in my own small way I have broken some new ground, added to the canon, and helped to slightly shift the paradigm and allow newer artists to be able to express themselves more freely with their sounds.

In terms of defining the ‘UK sound,’ it’s an impossible task to encapsulate a whole country’s sound and musical heritage into a few sentences. The UK sound which I enjoy exploring, is underlined by lots of sub-bass and weight in the low end, engineered to play on a big sound system, with complex rhythms, and more often than not, a dark, futuristic mood. Other than that, it’s actually quite a puzzle to define, as the very nature of the hardcore continuum (and the very nature of life itself, in fact) is that it is constantly changing. I could list 500 tracks which encapsulate the UK sound, but as I only have a few paragraphs, I’m going to say ‘Swarm‘ by Doc Scott and ‘I Luv U‘ by Dizzee Rascal are two tracks which sprang directly to mind for me when I read the question.

During the very recent club ‘history’ (perhaps we need more quotation marks as I’m referring to the last couple of years), the idea of a defined musical scene mutated, evolving past geography toward a form of digital ubiquity. The continuous hybridization of sounds and the increasingly international profile of electronic music made things more diverse and, at the same time, more standardized. How do you navigate this paradox?

I don’t think this is a new thing, although I definitely agree it’s been accelerated. Nothing exists in a vacuum. In my mind, the core of any culture is shared meanings; then a lot of the time, further innovation comes from the conversations between one culture being exposed to another, between countries, cities, between people. Baltimore Club is an example that I have always found really interesting, as the first wave of artists like DJ Technics were all sampling breaks from imported rave records from the UK, which in turn were breakbeats that the UK had sampled from imported hip-hop records from the US, processing them and speeding them up. So, it’s this interesting symbiotic feedback loop which created something entirely new and innovative at many different stages of its cycle. This is just a quick example which sprang to mind as I write this, but once you start to recognise it, conversations between cultures play a big part in many innovations in art and music. It really interests me as an idea and is one of the main reasons why in the past I have done a lot of collaborations with artists from around the world and a lot of back-to-back DJ sets with people who are specialists in different genres to me. 

In terms of where we are today with technology and culture, increased connectivity has increased conversations and the volume of art being created, which, like anything, has a plethora of consequences that could be deemed ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

«I love being able to send my music all over the world at the click of a button and am fascinated by technological innovation, but I think one downside of the digitisation of culture and the rate at which people digest it today is that a lot of the time, scenes and localised sounds don’t get enough of an incubation period to develop properly.»

In the past, a lot of the UK scenes – hardcore, jungle, drum and bass, garage, grime, dubstep – for better or worse, were all time-limited by the production process of pressing physical vinyl. This had its upsides and downsides, but a by-product was it naturally made things operate at a certain pace, which I think led to a much deeper exploration of sound and embedding of the music within our collective consciousness.

I guess with regard to navigating my own work, although I am very in tune with what is happening in music, art, and the various zeitgeists, I try my best to not focus at all on what my peers are doing, instead just following my interests and focusing on music which provokes a reaction within me, be it emotional, physical, or cerebral. That’s the key to it.

Usually, the jargon associated with musical cross-pollination feels somewhat…violent, almost. The formulation often goes something like ‘Genres bleed into each other.’ However, in your new record, the sounds don’t seem to bleed; rather, they play with each other. I understand that this might sound like mere semantics to you, but due to my professional inclination, I can’t help but fixate on language. This is your second record after a three-year hiatus marked by significant introspection. Are these more joyful, welcoming sounds a reflection of a new era for you? How much of your feelings are imbued in your music?

Yes, I definitely feel like the MD series marks the start of a new era for me – ‘Mumdance 3.0’. I have always referred to my musical activity in waves/eras. The first wave of Mumdance was from 2008 to 2011 when I first emerged and was working a lot with artists such as Jammer & Diplo. I think this was epitomised by my ‘Mum Decent EP‘ and ‘Different Circles – The Mixtape‘ (Both released in 2010). During this time, I was putting out music which had a foundation in grime & the UK hardcore continuum but was strongly influenced by regional music from around the world, especially what was going on in Mexico & Brazil at the time.

The second ‘wave’ of Mumdance started in 2013 after a 2-year hiatus with the ‘Twists and Turns‘ mixtape and was a lot more UK-centric and introspective, focusing on all the sounds which I grew up with: hardcore, jungle, drum & bass, shoegaze, and cross-pollinating it with ideas from my more contemporary interests; techno, and musique concrète – which is the sound which most people today know me for. The idea with that was to completely invert where my influences came from; instead of looking outwards around the world, I looked inward to my upbringing.

With this emerging third wave, as my last wave was very dark in mood, I made a conscious decision to do the completely opposite and try to make some ‘happy’ music and operate within genre boundaries with which I wouldn’t normally be associated, such as filter house. As I said above, it has been a real challenge, but I realise more and more that art is about the process, and this is how I like to spend my time.

In answer to your question, my feelings and outlook on life are definitely reflected in the music I make; they by their very nature are a sum of my experience. MD001 was a transitional record for me, just finding my feet again in the studio, but MD002 definitely feels like something new. For ‘Five Years’, I wanted to make a track which joyously celebrated half a decade of sobriety and the work I have done on myself in that period. ‘In Love Again’ references being back in love with music after a long time away and signals in my mind a return to form – that track really feels like an amalgamation of the ideas from the first wave mixed with the ideas from the second wave.

The Mumdance Archive is impressive. It stands as a testament to how, throughout your career, you have witnessed the evolution of the clubbing world and evolved alongside it. You have worked as a sound engineer in commercial settings, curated parties and events, delved into the purest underground scenes, and navigated more mainstream waters. After a hiatus, you are now 1 year back and seemingly fresher than ever. What did clubbing and electronic music mean to you then, and what do they mean to you now?

I’m very proud of the MD Archive; it took me a long, long time to put together, maybe like 18 months – it was my pandemic project. All my work was so disorganised and spread out across a number of old computers and hard drives, all in different locations. It was a very long and tedious project to go through everything and make sense of it, but at the same time, it was very timely for me as it was a period when I was feeling very lost. It helped me remember who I was, where I came from, and what I had achieved.

What I like about the archive is that when you see everything all together – the mixes, music, and interviews – you can see the progression in my sound and the progression of me as a person and artist. Also the aforementioned waves which have come and gone, and the themes that have stayed present throughout. I think a lot of people think I just play and create music randomly from disparate scenes, but there is a lot of thinking behind it and there are moods and themes which run through it all. Having everything in one place, you can really see it.

Another reason I put the archive together was trying to take power back from social media companies and big tech; so much digital culture has been completely lost over the past 20 years due to websites and hosting services going down or out of business. Which is both sad and scary. 

An amazing thing about the archive is that it has evolved to become a platform from which I can broadcast radio. As a result of that and in tandem with Discord, a whole community has organically sprung up. When I do radio broadcasts, all the listeners meet up in the discord and there is a really buzzing live chat which has developed a new level of interactivity between artist and audience which I honestly have not seen anywhere else. There was one time where I hadn’t had any dinner, so listeners sent a pizza over to my studio live on air so I could stay and do a longer show & another time where when I got to the studio the CDJs weren’t there, so listeners just sent me their music live on air & we just all listened to each others music for a couple of hours; there have been some really beautiful experiences & I can comfortably say that the MD Discord is one of the friendliest places on the internet. Everyone is so kind, funny and helpful there. Social media always just upsets me, and the discord server is a complete antidote to that.

Electronic music still means as much to me today as it always has, I’ve accepted that I am here for life. I’m not out clubbing every weekend like I was when I was younger, but I stay connected and if something is interesting to me I will make an effort to go and experience it first hand, even if it means saving up and traveling to another country, which is something I have always tried to do throughout my life;

«I’m a firm believer that you can’t form a proper opinion on something unless you have experienced it first hand.»

I want to give a big shout out to my friend Chris Yaxley who gave a lot of his time and energy helping me code the archive. He is one of my best friends from childhood; we started DJing and buying records together when we were 12, so it was really nice to revisit all this with him.

5MD002 is out on your new label, MD Dubs. How does MD Dubs differ from Different Circles? Why did you feel the need for a different outlet?

MD Dubs serves as an outlet solely for releasing my own music with a relatively short turnaround time, whereas Different Circles functions as a highly curated platform for showcasing other people’s music. I believe MD Dubs also signifies a general levelling up at every stage of my production process. I can honestly say that the tracks on MD001 and MD002 represent the best music I could have possibly made, utilising the best equipment available to me at that specific moment in time. The tracks are mastered at Abbey Road by Alex Gordon, who truly understands my vision and possesses an amazing ear. Recently, I’ve begun sharing my studio with a mix engineer named Alex Evans, and we’ve naturally started collaborating. As someone solely focused on mixing as a career, he is a master of his craft and adds a dimension that I could never achieve on my own, teaching me so much in the process. In previous stages of my career, I handled everything myself, but this time around, I’m trying to explore a different approach.

Whenever I start doubting myself and if my output is good enough (which is quite a common occurance), I remind myself that I spent countless hours working on it, revising and refining it to the best of my ability within the time frame allotted. It’s been mixed by a Grammy-nominated mix engineer and mastered at Abbey Road. It truly represents the best I could achieve at every stage of the process. 

«As I wrote the shoutouts for MD002, I was struck by how many people played a part in bringing the EP to life and creating the visual world around it. I think thats a beautiful thing.»

You stated that each MD Dubs release will be accompanied by a Sholto Blissett painting. You always referenced a wide plethora of extra-musical elements in your work, one of the most dear to me being William Gibson. Besides musical influences, what drives and inspires your ethos as a creative the most?

I’m really happy to be collaborating with Sholto Blissett; His paintings remind me of a mixture of Fredric Edwin-Church and Giorgio de Chirico, they resonated with me from the very first moment I saw them. I always make it a point to attend graduate art shows to see what the new generation is creating each year, and that’s where I first encountered his work, pre-pandemic. A few months later, during the pandemic, his art was still on my mind, so I decided to commission a painting from him. He cycled over and personally dropped it off, and we’ve stayed in touch since then. When I thought about what I wanted to do with the MD series, I thought of his artwork immediately. I believe it really complements and encapsulates what I’m trying to achieve with the series. Working with him has felt natural and organic, and I love that each artwork actually exists in the real world. It’s been amazing to see his career blossom, and I am certain it will continue to do so.

Of course as a musician I get very inspired by other musicians, which is part of the reason why Logos and I wrote the track “Teachers” – to express our gratitude to those who have influenced us. Outside of music, I draw inspiration from various sources; books and literature are definitely among them. Reading a book is like ‘updating your software’ and expanding your worldview. There are authors who have been highly influential to my work as an artist. William Gibson, for sure, and more recently Jorge Luis Borges (I’ve literally read everything he ever wrote), Gabriel García Márquez, and, on a deeper level, Thich Nhat Hahn. Reading is akin to travel and art; it exposes you to someone else’s way of thinking and doing things.

Visual art and art theory are very influential to my work on a conceptual basis. Minimalism is a core theme that runs through all of my discography. I come from a working class background and have no formal education in art (or in music, for that matter), I’m completely self-taught through reading and experiencing as much as possible firsthand. Conceptually, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, and Agnes Martin have influenced my music by embodying abstract minimal art stripped back to its core, often without any sort of reference to the real world. This influence extends to the graphic designers I work with. I spend a long time discussing art and design Alex Gross and Lucy Wilson at All Purpose studio, who handle all my design work & have become good friends. This time around, there was a conscious decision to convey a lighter mood with the graphic design while still keeping it super minimal to reflect the music. If you look at the artwork for Radio Mumdance Season 03 series, you’ll see the influence from Lissitzky and Malevich is very apparent.

I believe that while conceptualising, theorising and engaging with art in its various forms is enjoyable, there has definitely been an over intellectualisation of dance music in recent years, which can become tedious. I admit that I’ve been guilty of this at times, but I always prioritise keeping things fun above all else.

«I want my work to represent a collision of high and low brow culture.»

DJing is a somewhat conversational discipline. On one end of the club there is you, your taste, your sound, on the other there’s the audience, with their vibes and moods: Different audiences lead to different conversations –DJing happens in between. Does your experience as DJs and these conversational elements of the discipline inform your music production, or is producing the space where you reclaim total autonomy for where you want your sound to go?

Nine times out of ten, I create music with a focus on the club in some shape or form. I always ensure my tracks are highly functional and easy to mix, with DJ-friendly intros and outros. However, everything in between is always centred on innovation and communicating something in a unique way. I try to take the accepted paradigm and bend it into a strange shape, so it’s recognisable yet feels alien. I’ve mentioned in past interviews that I try to make my tracks like firework displays for a sound system. I think this ethos is particularly evident in ‘In Love Again».

In terms of DJing, lately I’ve been focusing on 4-deck extended sets. When I began DJing, I only did one-hour sets with two decks, but now I prefer longer sets—five, six, eight, even ten hours. I have a lot of music I want to share and a lot to communicate, so longer sets make more sense for me. It’s also very gratifying to soundtrack an entire evening for people who are strapped in and committed to the journey. Learning to use four decks has been very enjoyable as well. If you listen to my DJ or radio sets, you’ll know I don’t use any sort of syncing. (Let it be known that I have no problem with people who do; I just find syncing more confusing than enabling) However, I also enjoy the fact that at any moment, my set can fall apart in quite a dramatic fashion—and quite often it does.

«But that’s what’s human about it, and I’ve learned that the human element is what everyone truly appreciates the most.»

Last question: What more do you have in store for 2024? Something you are particularly excited about?

In the past, one of my weaknesses has been inconsistency. I tended to work in frantic bursts, and then burn out completely. This time around, I’m aiming for a calm and consistent output of good music. A marathon rather than a sprint. I plan to release four MD Dubs releases this year, one every three months. Additionally, I’ve been collaborating with an immensely talented choreographer named Zoi Tatopoulos We have some very interesting projects in the pipeline…

Finally, I’m pleased to announce that Different Circles will be returning in 2024. We are in the process of putting together a compilation called ‘Ping Volume One,’ which originated from an in-joke with the Discord community. This joke evolved into an episode of ‘Radio Mumdance called «The Ping Report» and now it’s blossoming into a conceptual compilation, marking a new chapter in the label’s lineage.

Interview · Andrea Bratta
Artwork · Sholto Blissett
Photography · Sam Hiscox
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Angel D’lite

Cloud 69

NR presents Track Etymology, the textual corollary to nr.world’s exploration of contemporary soundscapes: A series of short interviews delving in the processes and backstories behind the releases premiered on nr.world’s dedicated platform.

Hello to both! Hope you had a great start of the week and thank you for doing this! The EP is sick! My first question is a pretty straightforward one, the textual equivalent of a warm-up: What brought you together on this collaborative journey?

Angel: My memory is actually a little hazy, as we started this project over a year ago, but Oli [Goddezz] had asked me if I wanted to work on something for Goddezz, and I had this idea to do a split EP with Lucy, a really good friend and an incredible producer. When our friendship was blossoming we were both in the early stages of production, always sending each other WIPS, encouraging and inspiring each other, so it’s super cute to have worked on this project together.. a full 360 moment. It’s been amazing to see and hear Lucy’s musical journey and how she’s grown as an artist and a composer, watch this space! 

LUXE: I feel as though Sadie and I have been talking about writing / working on some music together for a long while… We’ve always been close on eachothers production journeys – it feels really nostalgic and emotional to think back to our flurries of texts hyping eachother in our early days of production. Sadie was the first person to hear some of the first tracks I ever made and her infectious energy and encouragement helped me find confidence in what I was doing – I feel so grateful. Seeing her trajectory makes me so unbelievably proud and i’m so excited to see how life continues to unfold.

What were the elements of your respective sounds that you felt clicked together best and complemented each other? Additionally, what differences in your approaches did you feel add interesting twists to the tracks’ layout?

A: I LOVED working on the remix for Lucy, I loved hearing the wubby, textural sounds she used to make ‘Dance Enchantress’ . It’s really both of our worlds merging, with both the remixes and I think you can hear both of us in both remixes too! We are very different as producers and DJs, but I’d say we have a crossover of very UK bass kinda sounds within our productions and I think you can hear that in both the tracks and our remixes. 

L: I had so much fun working with Sadie’s stems, her gorgeous take on old skool nostalgia / euphoria was so refreshing to work with. I adore how both remixes turned out, I’m literally obsessed with sadie’s remix of my track!!! I love how we’ve created this common ground in our sound and production styles. 

If I were to put a label on the EP, I’d say it’s a UKG record, at least in its sonic backbone. UKG is a genre which elements are filtered into much of Y2K pop music, a current, if we can call it that, which has seen a big resurgence recently, almost to the point of saturation, as every trend deserving of that title should. Your EP strips the UKG resurgence back to the nostalgia and the pop-adjacency and brings it back to its roots: the club, dubstep influences, grimey sounds, a ravey funk. What were some of the influences behind this record?

L: Enchanted captures a really wide range of influences across the tracks, which are reflective of the ways in which mine and Sadie’s sounds crossover in our productions and sets. I honestly wanted to indulge in making something that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is a nice melding of some of my main influences, trancey and bassy with a hint of garage swing. Dance Enchantress felt like a fitting name with the alluring little vocal chop.

A: I was actually really inspired by a tune from Lobec – 5am Nostalgia, a beautiful, euphoric end of the night dancefloor tear jerker. Cloud 69 is a Poundland knock off, but it does the job I suppose! 

The remixes move the record away from familiar territory, slightly more at a distance from UK sounds, while remaining coherent with the vibe of the EP. How did you select them?

A: It was actually Oli’s [Goddezz] idea to get some remixes (I think, as I say it has been a long time in the works!) Each remix is very special in their own ways. I admire all the artists so much and I’m so grateful to have them all together on this.

I’ve been a big fan of Baraka (as people and artists) for a while now and that was really exciting for me to get them on this project, as it’s also their 1st remix! They have such a unique sound that spans sexy naughties-esque downtempo, 90s gabber, modern trance and techno, but always ravey and sexy, there’s a mindblowing Baraka track for every time of the day or night. I had no idea what they would make for us, but I really couldn’t be happier with what they’ve done! 

Both FAFF and Local group are good friends of mine, I knew FAFF would bring their silly, camp, sexy energy to this release, and it’s totally exceeded any expectations, actually becoming my favourite FAFF production, it’s all of the above, fun and funky fresh. I knew whatever Local Group would make would be a dancefloor destroyer, everything they put out is an instant bassbin hit. It means a lot to me to have them on this, we have remixed each other before, but this track is really next level. 

L: I think once we’d got the 4 tracks done of 2 originals and 2 remixes between Sadie and I we were speaking with Oli (Goddezz Daddy) and thought we may as well develop things further by curating a selection of remixes. The selection of artists was important – we thought it would be fun to cover all the sounds we love and the genres and spaces that influence us. Local group, and FAFF are close London contemporaries, incredible DJs and Producers,  who Sadie especially has known for years. Baraka we thought would be an amazing addition to the remixes, we didn’t really know what direction it would go in and it turned out to be this incredible trip-hop ethereal 90s concoction!! Mabel I was really keen to get on as I’ve been obsessed with her deep bassy psychedelic trance fueled productions and have loved seeing her trajectory. I love her flip of my original. What’s key here is that the remixes have created a perfect storm of genre mashup influences which feels very central to the whole project – the remixes made the sound world feel complete.


Last question: Are you planning some special B2B dates following the EP
release?

Keep your eyes peeled

Interview · Andrea Bratta
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Plebeian

Ephemerides

NR is excited to announce the premiere of ‘Ephemerides’, a track by New York City-based producer and sound engineer Plebeian aka Andrew Nerviano. Plebeian is quickly becoming one to watch on the scene for his “acutely detailed and explorative bass productions reminiscent of Objekt and Djrum.” 

The artist’s track ‘Ephemerides’ is featured on the newly released Various Artists EP by Berlin wax label Isabelline alongside other avant-garde compositions from artists such as Corell, Gaul Plus, and Undveld. In addition to this Plebeian’s upcoming solo EP titled ‘Contrast’ will be released via Grid Records on February 16th. NR joins Plebeian in conversation.

What was your creative process when working on your new track Ephemerides?

It originally began as a eurorack jam and was developed into an arrangement in Ableton. I wound up making an unusual amount of revisions, so the end result is essentially a remix of a discarded track. Thankfully David, who runs Isabelline, pushed me to take it further and now I’m super proud of the track.

How do you think your music aligns with the other artists on the Various Artist EP?

The A and B of the comp are divided between two different moods. I am on the lighter side and wound up contributing the most straightforward dance number. I think there’s a dissociative thread that runs through all of them despite having pretty different energies.

Tell me more about your beginnings in music and how you progressed to where you are today?

I began writing and recording music at around age 14. I was primarily a guitarist playing in bands but began making electronic music early on. A close friend of mine was a really gifted electronic artist, so I was fortunate to have someone to learn from. 

My early influences came from IDM and pop of the time. It wasn’t until I attended Unsound while studying audio engineering abroad that I heard dance music in the right context and something clicked. I switched entirely to dance music after moving to NY in my early 20s. I also began engineering records for other artists and ran a label with a group of friends for a number of years.

What would be some of your dream collaborations and why?

I have been listening to several of Valentina Magaletti’s projects lately and they’ve made me really drawn to live drum sounds again. Everything she does is amazing.

Pete Namlook is another prolific collaborator I would have loved to have seen work. His music is so patient and in the moment, unlike my own stuff which is very ADD and overly arranged. 

Where did you get inspiration for your upcoming solo EP Contrast on Grid Records?

The tracks were originally written for a live set at Dripping Fest in New Jersey, just a few miles from where I grew up. I was really motivated to not bomb in my hometown! And of course, make something special for the occasion.

I was also greatly inspired by a new drum machine just constantly in awe of the sounds it was able to create. Most of the EP was written on one machine.

What advice do you have for young creatives looking to work in the music industry?

As someone that doesn’t really work in the industry, all I can say is stay on your grindset, never log off, become a DJ, and don’t let anyone stand in your way.

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Interview · Nicola Barrett
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Overmono

The In-Between: Overmono create a layered and boundary pushing sound that exists between emotional states. 

Overmono are a UK electronic music duo made up of brothers Ed and Tom Russell. Raised in Wales, the siblings had individual success as producers before joining forces as Overmono. Wanting to reduce the influence of their individual pasts from the mix, they isolated themselves in a cottage and started to develop the foundation behind their music. Now, through a standing relationship with pioneering British label XL Recordings, they have released a series of layered and boundary-pushing work that define their distinctive sound today.

For this issue, NR had the opportunity to catch up with Ed and Tom to discuss their memories of growing up together, their experience of shaping Overmono to this point and their ambitions for the future.

Tom and Ed, thanks for joining us for this issue. I’ve been looking forward to having this conversation with you. I want to start by asking you about your memories growing up together, and what your individual influences and gravitations were because you’ve both done so much individually before Overmono.

T: I’m the elder of the two. Growing up in a house together, I was getting into rave music and Ed could hear the music through my bedroom door. I had turntables and some records and Ed got a pair of turntables when he was ridiculously young, like when he was around 10 years old. Then he was stealing records from my room, so there was some cross-pollination going on. As we got older, Ed developed his own taste and went on his own journey, and I developed mine and went on my own one, but it was all generally electronic music.

E: It feels like over the years our influences or what we were into individually were sometimes miles apart from each other, but then 6 months later we would come back and we’d be listening to the same thing.

«As we got older the distance between us got narrower and narrower, and nowadays it’s really rare that Tom plays me a record and I turn around and say “that’s shit, I don’t like it”..»

T: Haha when that does happens, I get really annoyed and I’m like you’re just not getting it!

E:Yeah haha, and these days we’re so similar in the sense of what we’re into, which from a writing point of view, makes everything pretty effortless because we both know what we like and what we want to try to achieve.

That connection is definitely felt in Overmono, but as a listener I can also hear and distinguish your individual influences feed into this project as well. Listening to your individual projects, it feels as Overmono is a cumulation of all those individual journeys. I’d love to hear more about you experience during those earlier projects – Tessela (Ed), and Truss, MPIA3 and Blacknecks (Tom). 

T: I’ve always been really into Techno. Various styles of it. It has been a constant for me since my teens. I remember hearing Tanith on Tresor, it completely blew my mind and sent me down this rabbit hole. So, I just carried on doing that, and through the 2000’s I was getting more and more heavily into production, which led me into the projects you mentioned. I think for me, and I guess Ed can come back to this too because I’m speaking a bit for him as well, I felt really pinned in at the end. Because I’d done so much producing into a similar lane, I felt like that was what was expected of me. As much as I loved listening to that stuff, I felt like there were broader horizons I wanted to explore, and that inevitably led us down this path to start this project together.

E: I feel like we both started feeling that similar feeling around the same time. I remember releasing this one record and someone said to me “I’m all for artistic development, but where are the break beats?”.  It got to a point that I felt like I had to put a break in every single tune otherwise people would be like this doesn’t sound right. Tom you were probably at a similar point with more distorted stuff..

T: Yeah, if I didn’t do something that was really tough and distorted it would just get no attention or traction. I could make something in 5 minutes that was distorted, and don’t get me wrong I love that sort of stuff, and people would go mad for it. But I could spend a couple of months crafting something and think it was one of the best things I’ve ever done, and nobody would care.

E: And That was a big thing both of us were going through around the same time. When you’re making music and figuring out your sound, cultivating it and honing it, it might feel really nice; to know exactly what you need to do to make something good because it becomes effortless. But after a while, when the expectation becomes “this is what you do” then, you start to think there’s so many other influences I have that I want to start to broaden what I do here. You end up feeling blocked from doing that. 

«We got to a point that we were like “let’s just start making music together and see what that’s like. No one needs to know we’re doing it together, or that this project even exists. Let’s just write some music and see what that sounds like”.»

The series of first ten tracks we wrote, in a really short period of time – like 3 or 4 days – sounded quite different from our previous work but we were surprised by how cohesive it all sounded. There was no plan for it, we just said let’s take this equipment, go to this place, lock ourselves away, write some music and see what it sounds like.

T: It was so nice to be in this headspace where we had no expectations at all, and no personal expectations either. We just said “let’s go to this place, make some music and whatever happens, happens.” We had no intention to start the project at that point, we just wanted to write some new music together. The whole idea for Overmono came quite a bit afterwards. It was really amazing to have that freedom and it’s something we still try to maintain because it was so liberating.

E: It gets harder and harder the further down the road you get because the expectations start growing again, and once you put out a few records that have done well, it’s harder to come out with something that is really weird or super headsy. But that being said, we still have that same mentality that we try to go somewhere that isn’t our own studio, somewhere that is a different environment, somewhere that we can’t be contacted and we can’t contact other people. We just go there to sit and try to make some music.

«It’s that thing of disconnecting completely and forgetting about all the noise and any expectations. Then you end up writing some of the best stuff because we’re just having fun.»

Yeah, the Arla I-III series! It’s interesting to hear the process you went through to write this collection of tracks. I realise that you did projects together before this too, projects like TR//ER. To me, the Arla series definitely sounds like a more cohesive beginning or foundation to Overmono. I’d love to hear more about your process of forming your sound as Overmono at this earlier stage.

T: There was a lot of sampling in the Arla I-III EP series, and it was nice because I didn’t do a huge amount of sampling before so it was a fresh perspective in production for me, and – I learned a lot from watching Ed because he’s great at it, and for me this was cool because it was an area of production that I wasn’t familiar with and got to explore. 

I was given, as a long term loan, a large record collection from my brother in law, which was a DJ in Leeds in the late 80’s and early 90’s. He had loads of old House and Techno records, and it was just in his basement collecting dust and getting a bit of mould on it,. So, I was like I can take care of it for you. But it turned out there were only a few good records in there, and most of it was utter crap – white labels that probably never made it to an official release, but it was still a pretty good archive of early British House and Techno. We decided to make something out of it, so we went through it all and started to make this huge sample bank. That was kind of the foundation of a lot of the Arla tracks. This is also maybe why they have a cohesiveness because they were recorded through the same turntable and through the same process. 

E: They were so dusty weren’t they…

T: So dusty! So much crackle and noise, and it’s also why those tracks don’t translate to sound systems very well haha. A lot of it again, was me watching Ed using the sampler and also Ableton, because to that point I was mostly a Cubase user for all my life. Ed kept asking me to switch over to Ableton and I was like “Nah, I’m used to Cubase, that’s what I know – blah…-blah blah…” After a few days in the cottage writing the Area stuff, and watching Ed use Ableton, I was like holy fuck I gotta start using this! It made other stuff look so archaic. The amount of times I would try to set up a side-chain in Cubase and I couldn’t be arsed because it was so long-winded, and then watching Ed do it in seconds. Also, seeing how you could manipulate samples with warps and time stretches was really inspiring. 

E: I think during this session we had a few synth lines that have been just sitting around, so we started to process them through the same process that we were using for the record collection, so that added a different dimension to them. If you listen to original Arla samples a lot of them have a late 80’s sound to them but we just mangled them over and over till it didn’t sound like that. 

Because we weren’t in our studio, we just rented a cottage in south wales, we had a limited amount of equipment with us. We had a small mixing desk, two speakers…

T: Didn’t we borrow an Allen & Heath?

E: Yeah! We borrowed an Allen & Heath mixer from David.

T: Shout out to him for lending that to us. Everything went through that and we also had a Lexicon PCM 80. I don’t know if we had any other effects?

E: We just had that one Reverb, and we took a Virus C synth, and probably a compressor. Think there was another synth as well…

T: We took the JD 800, didn’t we?

E: Yeah it was the JD 800! Haha.

T: Haha it’s pretty much the heaviest synth we could fit in the car.

E: It was this beast of a synth that we only ended up using for one day. The rest of the days we were super productive and for one day we just dicked around for 6 hours on the JD 800, and we thought the stuff we wrote was super deep. The next morning we listened to the track and we were like “Jesus christ that one’s getting axed” haha!. I think it made it to some of the tracks at the end though. It was a bit fucked up and it sometime would go weird and out of tune. You would be recording a synth line and move a fader or open up a filter a tiny bit, and it would go mad! So we chopped some of those bits up and put them into the tracks too.

You could feel that, considering the amount of tracks in the series, there were different approaches between them. Going from a track like O-Coast to Phase Magenta to something like Harp Open, although there was definitely a cohesiveness, you could tell that there were different influences and gravitations behind each of them as well. I want to ask you about your first studio in Bromley, and your experience of setting up that studio together shortly after the Arla series.

E: After that time writing in the cottage, we both had separate studios for a bit. Tom had a studio in Soho and I would go there quite a lot. The studio was right across from Black Market Records, and we would end up writing a lot of the stuff at his studio. I had a studio in my flat too, and we split our time between there and Tom’s studio. 

That was really good for a while, but after a bit we thought let’s combine all our gear to one big studio because we were writing so much together. It just so happened that this really big studio was becoming available in Bromley, which is a half an hour south of Peckham. It hadn’t been touched since the mid 90’s. It had this swirly paint job that was pealing off, and old school carpets with fag burns all over it. That said, it had a good feeling to it. It had this massive control room, a live room and a kitchen. It was big enough to play a five-a- side football game. So we decided to take it. 

We set it up into two rooms. All the stuff that we used less often or used for our live shows one live room. There would be a bunch of synths set up with loads of effect pedals – and some random kit that we collected over the years. You could spend a day in there and have the freedom to start recording loads of stuff with all the gear, which was really fun. Then you had the control room that was properly a sound-proofed studio, which had all our gear set up in it and sounded amazing. That’s where we’d work on the tracks together. We were in that studio for three and a half years, and we spent quite a lot freshening it up. We took all the carpets off and sanding the floors back, but unfortunately the whole building got sold to developers. It was such a unique place. It was in the middle of nowhere.

T: It was the most unassuming place for a studio, just in the ass-end of absolutely nowhere –

E: There were no other studios there. It was opposite a chip shop, above a church, beneath a magazine printer, so it was so random. I remember every now and then we had someone come over to produce something with us. We had VK, a drill producer, come over and when I went down to get him, he  was like “nah, don’t know about this”. You had to go through this bin store and get to these industrial stairs and I remember looking at him and he was like “this isn’t right”.

T: The previous occupant put up these weird hospital signs, like “blood unit this way” or “radio therapy that way”…- obviously trying to put people off it.

E: It looked like a really weird NHS unit and was sort of an outlier. But yeah we were there for three and a half years and it was amazing. We wrote a lot of the Overmono stuff there. Still, when we had that studio we would book times to go away. We went to a remote hut in the Isle of Sky in the Highlands of Scotland. We would get as much gear as we could and fit it into a few peli cases to fly with. We would always keep that mentality of taking some gear and go write for however many days; where all routine could go out the window, to see what we come up with. Sometimes in five days we’d end up doing what we did in three months in the studio. But yeah R.I.P Bromley studios, we really loved our time there and it was an amazing place.

T: Yeah it really was!

One of the things that really stuck out to me reading about you in the past was you saying that you always felt like “you were always looking in from the outside”, even from early on in your careers. That you grew up outside of a big city and it never concerned you what the trend was at that time. I feel that these moments where you disconnect yourselves have been so potent because it’s so close to what’s been true to you from the beginning.

A track that I listened to a lot early on when I was getting into your music was actually called Bromley, which you did together with Joy Orbison. Before we move on from your time at Bromley, I want to ask you about your experience of working with Joy O, and also discuss the tracks you mentioned you made towards the end of this period because they’re some of my favourite work you’ve produced together.

E: The stuff with Joy Orbison started when he came to the studio a couple of times. We started to hang out and record a few things, so we decided to work on something official together. I remember I sent him a rough idea before and he was into releasing it on his label Hinge Finger, but I never ended up finishing it. So we thought “why don’t the three of us try to work on this track together and maybe we can get it to something that’s more finished”. We started pulling some of the stems from the original idea and started working on it together at the studio in Bromley.

«Us and Pete (Joy Orbison) have totally different working methods. For us, we’re really instinctual and we don’t really think of rules and structures.»

T: I think we’re just too disorganised for that kind of stuff. Personally I just don’t have the patience to stick with something for too long if I’m struggling with an idea. Ed usually perseveres longer than me, and often there are times it’s the right thing to do because the track gets cracking on.

E: Pete can persevere the longest, I’d say.

T: He has an unbelievable ability to stay laser focused on something. He can make these decisions hours and hours after being at the studio, where I’m just like I don’t know what’s going on anymore. He has an amazing ability to do that.

Really interesting to hear the story of how that all came together. I want to talk to you about your more recent releases on XL Recordings like Cash Romantic. I’m interested to hear about your process of shaping the sound behind these more recent releases.

T: By the time we moved away from the Arla series, we started using samples less and less, and we actually started making our own sample bank. We spent some time making up loops, synth lines and chord progressions that make a large sample bank that we now share. So a lot of these more recent tracks, their start points are from these samples we made. Gunk, for instance, is from a synth line that we originally came up with for our I Have A Love Remix, which is actually the last ever track we made at Bromley studios. So it was a really nice way for us to start Gunk off like that because that track – I Have A Love (Overmono Remix) – was a really special track for us. I think over the years, developing this sample bank that’s made of all our own samples, is a big part of our sound and serves as an important jumping off point for us. We started programming our own drums and aren’t doing much break-beat’s anymore. For example, the drums for Cash Romantic, the title track, is made from all programmed drums from a contact multi-sample drum pack. There’s no actual old sample break-beat, but instead everything’s much more processed.

«We always want to bring out the most grit and character we can out of things. Most of the time we have to use stuff in a way that they’re not designed to be used.»

That might be, for example, using an EQ to boost stuff so harshly that it starts distorting, but once you take that in the computer you can bring it back a little bit and take away some of the harshness.

«It’s about building layers of character and a sense of physical space. I struggle sometimes when listening to music that is too clinical or clean because there is this lack of physical space. That’s something we think about a lot; how the music itself sounds in relation to its space. Even if you’re listening with headphones with no interaction with the space around you, does it feel like it’s in its own space? And I think a lot of that comes from getting it out and running it through the different cables.»

It sounds like you’ve simplified or programmed your set up so that it’s more responsive to your making process, and that creates space for you to be more instinctive and expressive when shaping your sound. 

I’m curious to hear more about the story behind the imagery and visual content of your recent releases as well, and about your partnership with Rollo Jackson in creating that content.

E: There’s a few things that came together with the imagery. Mean dogs have traditionally been used in UK rave music like in old Drum & Bass records, and there was always this thing of dogs on chains snarling at the camera. It was something that became quite pastiche and didn’t age that well. Dobermans are perceived as these” vicious dogs”, but they’re not at all. That’s just how they’re trained and how people portray them to be. They’re actually really lovely and friendly dogs. So we thought “why don’t we do these sleeves with Dobermans on them?”. As soon as you tell someone “I have two Dobermans sat in a BMW on the cover of my album” they’re like “oh, that’s a bit cliché.”

T: And part gangster..

E: Yeah, haha! But they actually look quite playful and dopey, and in reality they are actually really playful.

«From a musical point of view that ambiguity of emotion is something we always gravitate towards. Something that feels like it’s between a few different emotional states. I think that’s what those dogs represent. Because of how we’re brought up to view Dobermans, when you portray them in a different way, you instantly feel like your are conflicted between different emotional states.»

You ask yourself «is this supposed to look aggressive and mean, or is it just lovely dogs being playful?”

Rollo (Jackson) has such an incredible eye and is able to see things in such a unique way. So many of the shoots we’ve done have been serendipitous. When we were shooting the cover for Everything You Need, it was in the carpark of the Bromley Football Club because we got kicked out of the other location. We showed up in a van with a couple Dobermans and a Boxer and they were like “what the fuck you guys doing?” haha

T: Haha, they were like, “get off our property!”

E: So we went to the football club and they were more accommodating. I just remember the sun coming out from behind the clouds and bouncing off the leather seats of the BMW, and we all looked at each other and were like that is it, that’s got to be the shot. And there’s still so much more to explore with that.

T: Also with Rollo, he’s so deeply involved in UK music culture. He has such a knowledge of UK dance music, specially London-centric forms of music, so he really gets where we’re coming from. Because of that we really feel like there’s a kinship there between us and we can really trust in his judgment of what we’re trying to achieve. Also, his judgment of what to avoid specially, like things that might be a bit pastiche, brings a fresh angle too while we explore things that we’re collectively into. 

I think this is a good point to ask you about your live shows and how this imagery ties into it. I’m curious to hear about how your live set up has evolved over the years and where you hope to take it next, as you are now embarking on on your UK, European and US headline tour. 

T: It’s a bit more professional these days that’s for sure, haha, It was a fucking mess back in day! We started with a booking request from Ireland in Limerick, and this was before Overmono even existed and before we did anything together. They were like “Would Ed and Tom like to play together?” and we were like “we’ve never done that or hinted that we wanted to do that together haha, but sure yeah why not!” So, suddenly we needed to figure out a techno live set-up. We had only released one track and suddenly we started getting a few gigs together. We were travelling around with the most insane amount of kit. We had this colour-coded pillow case system with different leads and cables in them. We had a blue pillow for our midi leads, a red one for our power cables, and a black one for our audio cables. They were all crammed into these giant peli cases with the rest of our gear. They would take two hours to set up and two hours to take down. We’d take some gear like a big drum machine and we’d only use it for 5 minutes.

E: I remember you used this synth that didn’t have any controls on it..

T: The EX, the Korg EX-800 desktop version!

E: Yeah haha, you’d be playing a pad off it and you’d want to open up the filter and you had to press this button to find the filter and keep pressing it to turn it up… it was a mess and quite lawless. We would just have to improvise and some of the shows were alright and some of them were terrible.. So by the time we started doing stuff together as Overmono we already had learned a lot. When you’re playing electronic music live, there are these pit-falls that are waiting for you to fall into and you have to spend some time navigating those from a technical point of view.

«Performing electronic music live is a big technical process that needs to be continuously worked on and refined.»

For the first few years after every Overmono live show, we would almost redo the entire live show after every gig. We would sit down in our hotel room after every show with a notepad and write down all the things we wanted to change or improve. We would write down what worked and what didn’t work, and record all the technical problems we had in the show. We would keep repeating this and over the years we started honing in on what it worked for us from a performance and technical point of view. 

Now we’re in such a different spot, the set up hasn’t changed for six months, which is a new personal record for us. We feel more confident and comfortable than ever because we spent a long time developing a set up that is all properly functioning and cabled so it feels more professional. That means we can focus and have fun with the performance side of it, instead of worrying about why that drum machine went out of time again. But now our headspace can be filled with the more exciting stuff like wondering what I can make with these drums do for the next five minutes, and do something interesting and weird.

The next logical step was figuring out the visual side of things, and for a long time we were figuring that out ourselves. But generally we had no idea what we were doing, so we just borrowed a bunch of modular video gear and recorded a lot of things out of it.

T: It looked good on a tiny screen and we were like that’s killer, but then got to a festival with a giant LED screen and it looked so bad and so pixelated.

E: Now, we thankfully got more people on board to do that with us. We’re still pretty heavily involved because we have a clear idea of what it should be. So we’re more directly involved in the creative direction of the visual content, but now we have people that actually know how to use that gear. The visuals are generally split between footage that Rollo captured, like thermal images of the Dobermans running through a field, and then a lot of processed content we created with a visualiser called Innerstrings, who uses a lot of the same gear we were using but knows how to use it and he’s great with it. That’s enabled us to grow the show to what it is now, and we have ambitions to take it even further.

T: Like Ed said, the live show is something we are so deeply passionate about and something we’re continuously trying to grow. To make it more of an immersive experience in every step and try to think of the evolution of it. So that’s a big priority for us, but the biggest priority is to always keep writing and making music every opportunity we have.

«Our aim is to keep progressing and moving forward in writing music that we think is an evolution from where we were before.»

E: Going back to the live show, thinking about the covers we made with Rollo Jackson and our ambitions for the future, the live show gives us the chance to expand that into something more cinematic and the sleeve images start to feel more real.

«You suddenly feel like that whole world has opened up, so the further along we go the bigger we want that feeling to be. You see a Doberman running through a 50 meter screen, it’s just glorious and there’s nothing better. That’s what we want to keep growing and pushing towards.»

Team

Talents Tom and Ed Russell (Overmono)
Photography · Oli Kearon
Fashion · Kamran Rajput
Grooming· Daniel Dyer
Photography Assistant · Nic Roques
Fashion Assistant · Elza Rauza
Special thanks to Abigail Jessup, William Aspden at XL Recordings and Jon Wilkinson at Technique PR

Designers

  1. Left to right, jacket NORSE PROJECTS and hat Talent’s own; jacket SAUL NASH
  2. Left to right, jacket and trousers ONTSIKA TIGER and boots ARMANI EXCHANGE; jacket CP COMPANY, trousers TEN C, shoes and cap Talent’s own
  3. Left to right, full look ARMANI EXCHANGE; jacket and trousers MONCLER and shoes Talent’s own

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