The Overlords


With "All The Naked People," The Overlords have gone for a less aggressive sound while also making their music more direct. While the group has certainly not "sold out," being on a major label  this time around did have an effect on the band's approach to music.
     
"Knowing that you are being released on a major record company, of course there were a few things we changed slightly," explains Ian Ion. "But we have in our contract complete artistic control, so it's not like we had to make it more commercial. What we knew we had to do was make something that was very clear and professional. We knew we had to make an album presented to the whole world without any comments or accompanying booklet on how to understand this album. When you're releasing through a major record company, and this record is being released in 17 or 19 countries, somewhere down the line sombody's going to lose our bio, misspell our name, or forget what it's all about. So it's very important that the music stand for itself and says what the Overlords and Rune and I are all about. We like to think we've succeeded very well with this album."
     
Ian says that because they were more focused this time,  many good house tracks and pop songs were scrapped because they didn't fit into the big picture. These songs now reside "in the Macintosh trash can" and will never see release.
	
Within the band, Ian focuses on the technology, while Rune B handles the vocals. Ian says that he is the more logical of the two, while Rune is "more into weird ideas and lyrics." 
	
Listening to "All The Naked People," it's hard to tell where the sounds are coming from, but Ian explains that many are indeed accoustic instruments. The songs are all created and built up with electronics, but when it comes to recording real instruments are used. Some Ian and Rune will play themselves, though for more difficult instruments (like the digeridoo) other people are brought in.
	
One important aspect of  The Overlords musical philosopy is to let songs take on a life of their own.
	
"Doing a song is like giving birth to a child," says Ian. "You only control it for so much time, then it has its own life and it makes demands and at a certain point it's just there, its done. Sometimes it takes a lot of time, like with 'God's Eye' we spent one and half months, other times it goes really fast. At least for me, that concept has been very, very strong, that it's not you that's controlling the song, but rather the song that has its own seperate identity, it's own life. It's difficult to explain, but sometimes a song just tells you the chorus isn't right, make me a new  chorus, it doesn't work. It's like a child telling you he or she wants different dress."
	
When The Overlords play live, they feel it's more important to put on a exciting show than to get up on stage and show off their musical skills.
	
"There's a lot of electronic bands I've seen where it's like going to a classical concert," says Rune, the band's other half. "People just stand there with keyboards. You try to have a Saturday night out of it, it's entertainment that people come to see." 
	
The Overlords take their name from a 50's  cartoon/comic book and feel that it suites them well.
	
"There were sort of wild guys wandering around the universe, and that's how we see ourselves," says Ian. 

"We like to think of ourselves as sort of picking up ideas from all over, giving them the Overlords treatment, and then releasing them as Overlord's material."
	
"We wanted to have the loudest name in the universe," adds Rune." The next one up from here must be god, and we can't take that."
	
The band also likens themselves to Operation Overlord, D-Day of World War II.
	 
"What we're trying to do is free Europe as well," proclaims Ian. "Get rid of boring music and buy Overlords music instead!"


Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley. For more info on Chaos Control, email rsgour@aol.com.