Overseer

Meet Rob Overseer, a sonic producer who appreciates the finer ironies of life and music while crafting thunderous soundscapes brimming with bristling beats and layers of post-apocalyptic power chords. With the release of Wreckage, his first full-length album, Overseer signals the arrival of a massive new sound on the high-tech horizon.

Despite his grandiose moniker, this Leeds, England-based bloke stands a mere five-foot-four. “I don’t oversee anyone,” Rob laughs. “The name gives off the impression of a big entity, which is how I like the music to sound.”

Though they may not know Overseer by name (yet), millions of Americans are already familiar with the man’s music. Many of the songs on Wreckage have had massive exposure through their use in television advertising campaigns, major motion pictures, video games and extreme sports films.

More and more, high-tech video game designers, producers of cutting edge television advertising, and purveyors of extreme sports action are finding usages for the exhilarating rave-ups of Overseer. The scorching track “Horndog” has recently been picked up for the television ad campaign for the new Mitsubishi Endeavor.

Overseer’s increasing popularity in the video gaming community is a bit ironic, considering the fact that Overseer does not yet own a PlayStation 2. “I do have a Nintendo,” he deadpans. “It’s been sitting around gathering dust.”

Perhaps that’s because he already treats music like a three-dimensional futuristic game. Working in a medium of frantic blips, bleeps and breakbeats, Overseer has something of a checkered musical past. As a teenager, he played guitar in school bands, dressed in all-black and worshipped The Cure, Smiths, Pixies and Sisters of Mercy. After hearing Pop Will Eat Itself, Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest’s first album, he fell in love with the possibility of throbbing beats and pulsing electronic rhythms. Meanwhile, his brother pumped British heavy metal into the Overseer’s music 24/7, and, in 1995, the two styles fused to form the blueprint of the Overseer signature sound. To think, that all this noise and assault comes from the brainpan of a closet melody freak who name-checks Neil Young, Frank Sinatra and Radiohead as a few of his personal favorites.

“There’s always been a rock element to my dance music,” Overseer says. “My brother listened to AC/DC and Motö rhead and I picked up on that. I think of everything in terms of sounds. If I want something that is going to push that button, which is the equivalent of a big rock number, lots of times you have to go back to the guitar.”

Once the Overseer project was properly launched, he released two indie EPs — “The Zeptastic” (1996) and “Hit The Tarmac” (1998) — and began receiving rave reviews (including a big two-thumb’s-up from Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook). After doing a bit of live DJing and performing nearly two dozen live dates in the UK, Overseer signed with Columbia Records.

Fast-forward to the future-is-now, and we find Mr. Overseer unveiling Wreckage, a full-length sonic manifesto outlining the scorching sounds of things to come. Wreckage is Overseer’s first release since 2000’s utterly pummeling Everything Louder Than Everything Else, an EP which Overseer half-seriously jests was released “to universal apathy.”

Working in his cellar-based studio nearly all day (Overseer has just started to take weekends off, he says), Wreckage was produced in a series of whirlwind sessions by fellow Leeds resident Dave Creffield of whom Overseers says, “He’s someone I can turn to and ask, ‘Have I gone too far this time?’” One listen to Wreckage proves that, for Overseer, there’s no sound “too far” to elude his vision.

One of Wreckage’s centerpiece tracks, “Doomsday,” is a hip-hop meets rock effort using hefty beats, mashed-up guitar samples and the impressive lyrical skills of MC Nick Life. “He did the lyrics in 20 minutes,” says Overseers, “then I metal drum ‘n’ bass-ed up the track.”

“Basstrap,” another Overseer masterpiece deploys hip-hop vocal snippets and a raunchy bassline while the guitar-driven “Screw Up” finds Overseer paying homage to the rock band (and state-of-mind) Nirvana. “And besides, it has a 303 on it,” Overseer enthuses. “Everyone loves a 303!” Perhaps the biggest surprise on Wreckage is “Meteorology,” a cinematic vocal track led by Swedish singer Sandra Pehrsson, which displays the softer, more epic side of Overseer, high-technology’s ultimate one-man band.

What was it like creating Wreckage? Overseer, the post-modern musical mad scientist, calls it, rather disarmingly, “…weird experimental stuff. If anything, my ethos is to record whatever I want to do. I have quite varied taste.” And for a man of diminutive stature, his musical tastes, and the culture’s ability to absorb them, just get wider by the year.