Following the release of three EPs in 2020, anonymous Manchester electronic newcomers Overrider are pleased to cap off their first year by announcing their debut album, the city eats the stranger//the sky eats the city.
Set for release on 6th August 2021 and more dynamic than anything they’ve released to date, the city… doubles down on the band’s breakcore and jungle influences from their first two EPs.
The band recently released the video for lead single ‘Sunjammer’ which is out now following a premiere with Guitar World.
Written and recorded over the long winter of 2020, the album takes a break from the introspective themes of their previous releases, in favour of a more grandiose sci-fi concept. The band have this to say about the narrative of the record:
“To be honest, it’s been a tough year. There is a rising theme of dissonance and disquiet as the album progresses. We wanted to evoke something carefree and swashbuckling that gradually gets overtaken by anxiety and a kind of cosmic horror. The record is very much in two halves, like a classic LP. Most of the high energy, fun stuff is on the A side, and there’s a transition to maybe the darker, more creepy vibe as the B progresses.”
The band have performed a 180 since their first release, which had its genesis in semi-random, algorithmic composition. Now, for the debut album, Overrider have carefully crafted every single sound on the record. That goes from painstakingly assembling sample pads created from liminal minutiae like hangar doors, typing pools, generator rooms, tank turrets, and escalators, to making drum racks out of abstract guitar noise.
Like their past EPs, the 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, will be bundled with all downloads from Bandcamp. 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.
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.
Across the ten tracks on the forthcoming album, the band again called upon their previous collaborator John Simm, formerly of Cleft. He played on five of the tracks, though the band plundered their past works for percussion and guitar samples, so his contributions appear elsewhere too. Tom Peters (Alpha Male Tea Party) then mastered the album at Trapdoor Studios in Liverpool.
These outside collaborations had a big effect on the final release.
“We had nearly finished the album, and were thinking of it as this purely electronic LP. We’d ripped a load of samples from our first EPs and were pretty happy with the few drum loops here and there that we were using from that material, but we dropped John a line anyway, saying ‘got any ideas?’ The parts he sent blew us away, so we went back to the drawing board, re-imagining what the record would sound like, and in some cases totally re-writing tracks.”
The band will release further details and new music over the coming weeks.
Debut album the city… will be out on all major streaming platforms, and available as a free download from the Overrider bandcamp, on 6th August 2021.
the city eats the stranger//the sky eats the city track list:
1. w_//br=_k=r 03:06 [wallbreaker]
2. th= k:ck 03:44 [the kick]
3. th= m=sh 02:27 [the mesh]
4. s_nj_mm=r 02:36 [sunjammer]
5. syst=m cr_sh 01:53 [system crash]
6. :nt_ th= b/_ck 03:58 [into the black]
7. br=_ch 03:01 [breach]
8. =v_c _/_rm 02:13 [evac alarm]
9. th_rs:s 04:28 [tharsis]
10. t=rm:n_t:_n sh_ck 03:30 [termination shock]