OVERMONO - Pure Devotion

It's becoming increasingly common for a dance album (and I'm not talking about fashionable commercial productions) to resemble the cross-section of a tree trunk: its concentric rings reveal increasingly complex layers of time. That's what happens when you listen to the albums by Jungle and the Sault collective, where the citational effort is intentional and reveals a love for different eras of dance music. And beyond the pleasure of dancing to it, well-crafted dance music also triggers the pleasure of connecting with personal experiences (especially for those of a certain age). Those who haven't lived through certain periods still get to enjoy discovering sounds that warm both heart and body.

This is the case with Welsh brothers Ed and Tom Russell and their project Overmono. The two musicians are healthy carriers of a warm, engaging electronic sound made of syncopated rhythms and elaborate textures, which on their debut album, "Good Lies", became a trademark heightened by meticulous digital production. But Overmono didn't want to get stuck in a single electronic dance template: they wanted to explore in a more hands-on way, letting themselves be surprised by mistakes and imperfections. The history of dance music gave them the raw material to put together an album of pure devotion — "Pure Devotion", precisely, (released on XL Recordings) — which shows just how masterfully the duo can handle their craft.
Between analogue keyboards, vintage drum machines, syncopated sounds and distorted samples, Overmono put together a tracklist that draws from tech house and French touch (the nods to Daft Punk and their sampled guitars are numerous), ranging through the folds of the early 2000s all the way back to certain themes from UK bass music and vintage 2-step.

The album feels fresh, its sounds current and finely crafted, but the point is that to get people dancing, Overmono rework what they already know well rather than reinventing the wheel. It's devotion to the dancefloor, driven by the ambition to be among those who make it move. The opener, "Lockup", makes their intentions clear right away: fluttering keyboards, a straight four-on-the-floor beat, a sampled female voice looped into chopped-up phrases, distortion and sampled guitars bridging the opening section with the part where the bass kicks in and the keyboards soar skyward.
Electronics here serve the instinctive expression of feeling. On "Knight In Shining Prada" it's the voice of poet John Joseph Holt that takes centre stage, an intense spoken word performance over a carpet of obsessive beats that recalls certain rave music from the early '90s (it reminded me of Beloved): "We listened to Holt's recorded voice at full volume for hours and added the beat, and by dawn the first version of the song was ready."

The following track, "Slowmotion", feeds off the female voice and syncopated Dubstep beat, with synths weaving ethereal melodies disrupted by urban noise. It's a danceable track, but it's even better heard in the dark while watching the night lights outside the window. With "Even Angels Ghost", enriched by Kindora's voice, you throw yourself onto the dancefloor, swept up by a typically garage groove and a melodic riff traced by keyboards that build in a crescendo while the body moves, satisfied. Reflective tracks like "Gem Lingo" emerge from a record collection in which London Dubstep is studied material, offered here in a lighter, more melodic version.
The rest of the album stays at this level, and it flows by, a pure pleasure.

"Pure Devotion" is a tribute album to the dance music most beloved by the Welsh duo, and it should be taken for what it is: an act of love and a sharing of sounds and rhythms. The pleasure of listening to intriguing sounds sometimes outweighs the urge to dance, and that only makes it more interesting.

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19/09/2026