If you ever needed proof that the best electronic music comes from curiosity rather than expensive gear, Overmono’s announcement of their new album ‘Pure Devotion’ makes a compelling case. The Overmono experimental production techniques on display here read less like studio notes and more like a field report from two brothers who treat sound itself as a material to be stretched, burned, and broken. Tom and Ed Russell have shared the first single, ‘Lockup’, alongside details of the record, and the process behind it is as vivid as anything in the music.
The Russells describe running tape over magnets, blowing up speakers, and finally putting to use a dirt cheap overclocked FX unit they picked up years ago in Bromley. That last detail matters. This is not a unit bought for the album. It sat waiting, accumulated meaning, and eventually found its moment. That kind of patient, accumulative approach to DIY sound design in techno is rare, and it shows in the results.
Then there is the cymbal. Tom and Ed baked one in an oven, covered in coffee grounds, crisps, and vinegar, which is the sort of thing that sounds like a joke until you hear what it does to an attack transient. Tape manipulation in electronic music has a long lineage running from musique concrète through industrial and on into the textural experimentation that underpins a lot of the music Different Grooves covers, but applying that spirit to percussion in this way feels fresh. The results are not decoration. They are structural.
‘Lockup’ is available to hear now, and it gives a strong early indication of where the album sits sonically. The brothers have always worked in the space where rave muscle meets something more decomposed and weathered, and ‘Pure Devotion’ appears to push further into that territory. The Overmono brothers’ studio process, as they describe it, prioritises feel and texture over precision, which is exactly the kind of approach that produces records with a physical presence rather than a polished surface.
‘Pure Devotion’ follows the pair’s 2023 debut album ‘Good Lies’, which established them as one of the more thoughtful acts working at the intersection of UK rave history and contemporary club production. The new album announcement arrives with enough detail to suggest a genuine step forward in ambition, both sonically and in terms of how deliberately they have constructed the listening experience. For anyone who cares about where electronic music is going when it is made by people who still think about what it is made from, this one is worth watching closely.