overseer - wreckage
having spent a long protracted drawn out process in the studio to get to this final result of an album to the record shops shelves (debut releases came out in 96!), you can be assured that rob, along with his studio partner david creffield, has made an album that is both large, loud and somewhat big in the beats front.
yes, let's whisper it quietly - big beat revival.
the album steps into the gap left by the disappearance/retirement/alien abductions of appollo440, pop will eat itself, fat boy slim, chemical brothers and the whole classic skint catalogue. however, alongside the easily identified big dance noise monsters are a few pointers to the mans talents for epic cinematic productions indicating why exactly that overseer tracks that have been snapped up by hollywood and techno friendly shoot-em ups - just check the licensing page on the overseer website. you will have heard some of the mans noise somewhere.
so a quick rundown the opening trio of tracks, slayed, horndog and doomsday feature massive industrial guitar noise, hard raps, looped vocals and the aforementioned big fuck off beats, kick off the next hour in a fine style. the meek need not apply. luckily then the atmosphere calms down slightly for the dubby 'aquaplane' with found voices, distorted-n-twisted vocal loops and simple piano melody lead the listener into a nice mix of orb like bass with some of trip hops style for grandiose sonic gesturing to slow and low beats. this is followed by the albums moody centrepieces 'meteorology' and the follow on 'sparks' where swedish vocalist sandra pehrsonn, and rachel gray respectively, adding some emotional warmth to the advertising mans dream of rich strings, miserable oboes, hip hop beats, orchestral breaks-n-choral excess, which feature alongside easily digested melody loops, directing these straight to the top of the pile. dated the beats may be, but these two wonderful creations perfectly fill the gap between massive attack albums.
now that we are chilled, rob decides to drag the listener into the night, via the hard hittin' rap funk of 'heligoland', where dark ambience and horror music cliches make this a perfect soundtrack to any gothic noir hip hop game play. kill those zombies while this is blasting, and you will feel immortal.
so the album may be all over the place stylistically - from rich ambient strings ('supermoves' with the thomas dolby-esque weather forecast), to street level hip hop beats via some fm-radio sanctioned rock noise, but i suspect that's why i like the album. it's a dated mess of mid-90's dance music matched with some wonderful modern production that can be dropped into the playlist at any point, and you are guaranteed to hit some form of enjoyable paydirt.
fair play to the man and his techno-toys.