Overmono

A Welsh cottage and the Arla trilogy

After a Surgeon concert, Tom and Ed Russell packed their gear into a car, locked themselves in a Welsh cottage and, in a matter of weeks, ceased to be two parallel careers. From that 2015 retreat came the tracks that XL Recordings released as Arla I, Arla II and Arla III (2016-2017): agile techno, breakbeat and chopped-up vocals that no longer fit into Truss's hard techno or Tessela's breaks.

The duo's name points to Overmonnow, the neighborhood in Monmouth where they grew up. With no record store or urban scene at hand, they recorded Essential Mixes on tape and organized village raves. That distance from the British club tribes remains marked in their music: they do not pursue a closed genre, but rather the clash between rave hardness and an almost vocal melancholy.

Recent voices and a kit that doesn't sound like a machine

Ed had left an underground classic with Hackney Parrot (2013) as Tessela and had founded Poly Kicks, a label that has also released Joy Orbison and Special Request. Tom, a decade older, was Truss on Perc Trax. Together they signed a single track in 2012 as TR/ER. Overmono absorbed that background and reordered it: current vocal samples—not hardcore relics—modular kicks, live-recorded hi-hats and processing that seeks to make the drums sound alive.

The Bromley North studio, with a legacy from Strike, Artwork and 187 Lockdown, produced the single Bromley with Joy Orbison (2019). The trio returned as Joy Overmono on Blind Date. In 2021 they won UK's Best Live Act at DJ Mag's Best of British and released Fabric presents Overmono.

Good Lies, West Holts and Pure Devotion

Good Lies (XL, May 12, 2023) placed the duo at number 11 on the UK Albums Chart, with a Metacritic score of 83. Before that they had played Coachella; later came stayinit with Fred again.. and Lil Yachty (2024) and Turn the Page with The Streets. Visually, Rollo Jackson's Dobermans—fierce in legend, vulnerable in the photo—became a signature.

In 2025 they closed the West Holts stage at Glastonbury and headlined Boomtown and AVA. Pure Devotion (XL, August 7, 2026) was conceived between Iceland, Spain and the Bristol basement: baked cymbals, 1930s station speakers and a live show that had already toured the world with that same title. Today Overmono is one of the British club acts with the most festival pull, without having abandoned the brothers' laboratory.