TN:187 Overmono · Tape Notes · Radar

Lock Up: Post-Punk, Floods, and Sampling2:40 – 6:07

John KennedyHost

2:40

[upbeat music] It is Lock Up by Overmono from Pure Devotion, the new album.

John KennedyHost

3:36

That is in fact the opening track, and I'm very pleased to say that I have Ed and Tom, who are Overmono, sat with me here in the studios of Strongroom.

John KennedyHost

3:43

Hello.

Tom RussellGuest

3:44

Hello.

Ed RussellGuest

3:44

Hey.

John KennedyHost

3:45

It's great to have you here.

John KennedyHost

3:46

Thanks so much.

John KennedyHost

3:46

I know you traveled up from Bristol today to talk to us.

John KennedyHost

3:49

We really appreciate it, and I thought Lock Up would be a nice start, not just because it's the opening track on the album, but because in a way it hints at the depth that you've gone to on this sonic journey of exploration, um, looking far and wide and deep for sample inspiration, for musical inspiration, and I know that you dug into, uh, an obscure post-punk track to create Lock Up.

Ed RussellGuest

4:12

Yeah, exactly.

Ed RussellGuest

4:13

It was, uh, I...

Ed RussellGuest

4:14

As far as we can tell, it's the only, only song they ever released.

Ed RussellGuest

4:17

It's a, a band called Fast Relief, uh, a song called What a Waste, which we found...

Ed RussellGuest

4:21

I think it was a, a compilation of sort of-

Tom RussellGuest

4:24

Birmingham post-punk, I think.

Tom RussellGuest

4:25

Yeah

Ed RussellGuest

4:25

... yeah.

Ed RussellGuest

4:26

And, and we'd, we'd been reading, um, Rip It Up and Start Again, the brilliant Simon Reynolds book, and, uh, we just got on this mad post-punk deep dive and kind of all the, the way, the, the way that they were producing those records I think was really appealing to us.

Ed RussellGuest

4:40

The sort of quite carefree, embracing all of the imperfections, not getting too sort of bogged down in it all, and I think that was something we then took across the whole record.

Tom RussellGuest

4:49

They, they get a, just a, a real raw energy that's just like, I dunno, something really magic that you can only get really when you sort of abandon a need for, for things being perfect or like, um, yeah, you just throw caution to the wind.

Ed RussellGuest

5:05

Yeah.

John KennedyHost

5:05

Yeah.

John KennedyHost

5:06

And on that track you just sampled a little bit of the vocal, um, and, uh, I was telling [chuckles] you before we started recording that it's so open to interpretation.

John KennedyHost

5:13

You can come up with various different, uh, [laughs] meanings from, uh, quite profane, uh- [laughs]

Tom RussellGuest

5:20

[laughs]