Hot on the heels of the release of their debut album, anonymous Manchester alternative/electronic newcomers Overrider are pleased to reveal a surprise EP of unreleased material, kill -9 yr idols, set for release on 3rd September 2021.
As a taster, the band have revealed the video for title track ‘kill -9 yr idols’ which is out now on all good digital service providers.
During the writing process for their debut album the city eats the stranger//the sky eats the city (out now and available to download for free on Bandcamp), alt-coders Overrider ended up with a huge library of musical ideas. Although the album diverged heavily from their previous use of generative elements, they still explored musical systems while composing. Unfortunately, most of these sketches didn’t end up fitting the record.
“We had a number of tracks that had been useful for idea generation, but did not sonically work on the record,” they explain, “they didn’t make sense. However, because many of these had been generative explorations using some of the same loops, they sounded like they belonged together. These loops were breaks and guitars from our last EPs, or generated textures, classic breaks, whatever.”
“So, once the main album was complete, over a period of several weeks we recorded new guitar, bass and keyboard parts and then sent the results to John [Simm, drums], to see if he heard anything there. He sent back some great parts, we smashed them to bits, and that was that.”
Like every Overrider release, kill -9 yr idols is conceptual. Whilst the album focuses heavily on the limits of human perception and the unknown, the EP is concerned with concrete, known space. In this case, the external space of the city and the inner abstract space of computer runtime. Both spaces are liminal, the subject of attempts at subjugation. They are disputed, frequently subverted, and this obsession is laid out in the endless resampling and repurposing of sounds and motifs throughout the EP.
“The joy of sound is that it’s easy to trick the listener,” explains Overrider. “The EP started out as ‘how much can we do with just X elements,’ but quickly became about recycling and resampling to an extreme degree. Limiting to a number of tracks didn’t really work as a creative rule, but limiting to sounds we’d already made or found did. When sound is manipulated enough, you don’t have to use a guitar, you can just sample the Beetham Tower in high wind, tune it, and run it through an amp. It’s a black box.”
Describing themselves as “shoegaze x breakcore, but with the attention-span of Dillinger Escape Plan“, there’s still enough focus on a power-trio setup of guitar, bass/keys and drums for Overrider to be within the reach of a rock band—early listeners have thrown out comparisons to everything from Aphex Twin to The Mars Volta.
Like their past EPs, the band’s recent debut album is a concept piece, but this time it has a concrete narrative, fleshed out with illustrator Alex Moore. The result, a mini graphic novel that accompanies the album, is bundled with all downloads from Bandcamp, and an animated version can be seen on YouTube.
The band’s avatars were created by renowned illustrator and designer Boneface who has worked with the likes of Queens Of The Stone Age and CRX (ft. The Strokes’ Nick Valensi), contributed to the Hotline Miami video game series, and created character artwork for Deadpool 2.
kill -9 yr idols is released 3rd September 2021
kill -9 yr idols Tracklist:
1. init.sh 02:37 (Bandcamp only hidden track)
2. terminal 04:19
3. kill -9 yr idols 03:42
4. devnull 00:48
5. crypto)))core 02:28
6. sisyphean overflow 03:51
7. exit 1 03:05
