Overmono: Real Names, Aliases and the Welsh Brothers Behind UK Electronic's Biggest Live Act

Overmono are the Welsh brothers Tom Russell and Ed Russell, an electronic duo from Overmonnow, a district of Monmouth in Monmouthshire, south Wales. That small riverside place gave them both their name and their origin story. They are one of the most important acts UK dance has produced this decade, a two-person live band who turned two separate underground careers into a single, festival-sized whole. With their second album Pure Devotion out on XL Recordings on 7 August 2026 and a huge autumn tour ahead, this is the full picture: the real names, the aliases that came first, and why they matter to anyone paying attention to British electronic music.

Overmono at a glance

• Who: Overmono are the brothers Tom Russell and Ed Russell, a Welsh electronic duo.
• Where from: Overmonnow, a district of Monmouth in Monmouthshire, south Wales; the band name comes directly from Overmonnow.
• The older brother: Tom is the elder of the two brothers, according to DJ Mag.
• Before Overmono: Tom produced techno as Truss; Ed made rave, breaks and drum and bass as Tessela, best known for 2013's "Hackney Parrot".
• First joint alias: they briefly worked together as TR/ER from 2012, before settling on Overmono in 2015.
• Label: XL Recordings, home to their debut EP "Arla" in 2016; Ed also runs the Poly Kicks label, founded in 2013.
• Studio: now based in London, having moved from Monmouthshire.
• Signature track: "So U Kno", first released in June 2021, is their breakout crossover record.
• Debut album: Good Lies, released 12 May 2023 on XL, reached No. 11 on the UK Albums Chart and holds a Metacritic score of 83.
• Second album: Pure Devotion, an 11-track LP, released 7 August 2026 on XL, led by the single "Lockup".
• Live, not DJ: they perform a two-person hardware show with synths and drum machines, not a standard DJ set, with visuals by Rollo Jackson.
• 2025 highlight: they headlined and closed the West Holts Stage at Glastonbury on 29 June 2025.

Who are Overmono? Tom and Ed Russell, from Monmouth

Start with the question people actually type into a search bar. Overmono are two brothers, Tom Russell and Ed Russell, and they grew up in Overmonnow, a district of the market town of Monmouth in Monmouthshire, south Wales. The name is not an invented word. It is the place. When they needed something to call the project, they reached for the corner of Wales they came from, and Overmonnow became Overmono. It is the single fact that most quick bios get slightly wrong, so it is worth stating plainly: not Newport, not Cardiff, not the often-repeated but unsupported "Rogerstone". Monmouth.

Tom is the elder brother, according to DJ Mag's cover feature, and that age gap matters more than it first appears. It means the two did not come up through dance music at the same time or in the same way. They arrived from different doors and different eras, built separate reputations under separate names, and only later folded those two histories into one band. Full legal first names and birth dates are not something the pair have put into the public record, and no reliable source confirms them, so anyone claiming otherwise is guessing.

Today they work out of a studio in London, where they have been based for years. That move from Monmouthshire to the capital is part of the story too, the pull of the city's clubs on two producers who had already spent years in the underground. They are Welsh to the core, but the Overmono sound was built in a London room.

Before Overmono: Truss, Tessela and TR/ER

Here is the part that explains everything else. Overmono did not appear from nowhere in 2015. Both brothers were already established producers under other names, working in genres that sit some distance apart, and the fusion of those worlds is what makes Overmono sound the way they do.

Tom recorded as Truss, a name respected in harder techno circles for its weight and its physical, functional bent, music built for dark rooms and big systems. Ed, meanwhile, made his name as Tessela, working in rave, breaks and drum and bass, and his 2013 track "Hackney Parrot" became one of the defining breakbeat records of its moment, a jagged, rave-nostalgic weapon that DJs across several scenes reached for. Two brothers, then, at two poles of British dance: one in the low, relentless pulse of techno, the other in the chopped-up energy of hardcore and jungle.

They first tested a shared identity as TR/ER, a project that ran from 2012 and stitched their initials together, Tom Russell and Ed Russell, into a single tag. It was a bridge rather than a destination. Around the same time, in 2013, Ed founded the label Poly Kicks. When the two finally committed to producing together as Overmono in 2015, they were not amateurs finding their feet. They were two seasoned producers pooling a decade-plus of separate expertise, and the result was a sound that could carry the sub-weight and drive of techno while keeping the swing, breaks and emotional lift of rave and drum and bass. If you have ever wondered why an Overmono track can feel both hard and tender at once, this is the answer. It is Truss and Tessela in the same room, refusing to pick a side.

That lineage connects Overmono to a much wider family tree. The breakbeat DNA in their music runs straight back to the same source as the jungle and breakbeat lineage Overmono draw on, and the sub-pressure ties them to the UK soundsystem and bass current running underneath the whole scene. Overmono did not invent their palette. They synthesised it, with the authority of two people who had already mastered its separate parts.

XL Recordings, "Arla" and the road to "So U Kno"

Overmono's debut EP as a duo, "Arla", arrived in 2016 on XL Recordings, and that pairing has defined their career ever since. XL is one of the most storied independent labels in British music, and to land there so early said something about how quickly the brothers' new project was taken seriously.

The record that changed the scale of everything was "So U Kno". It first appeared in June 2021, on the Poly Kicks single "BMW Track / So U Kno", before being issued more widely through XL, and it pushed Overmono out of the club and into a much larger conversation. Built on a warm, looping vocal and a bassline that lands somewhere between garage and something softer, it is the closest thing the duo have to an anthem, a record that works on a festival field and in a set of headphones with equal force. It set the template for what followed: emotional, vocal-led electronic music with the low end and the drive of the dancefloor still fully intact.

The years around "So U Kno" also cemented Overmono's reputation as a live proposition rather than a studio-only project. As early as 2021 they won Best Live Act at DJ Mag's Best of British awards, a signal that the industry already understood where their real power lay.

"Good Lies" (2023): the breakthrough, and the Mercury myth corrected

Overmono's debut album, Good Lies, was released on 12 May 2023 through XL Recordings, and it confirmed the hype. It reached No. 11 on the UK Albums Chart, a striking placing for a leftfield electronic LP, and it drew what Metacritic classed as universal acclaim, holding a score of 83 out of 100. Good Lies took the ideas seeded by "So U Kno" and built a full body of work around them: emotive, sample-led electronic music that moved between euphoria and melancholy without ever losing its dancefloor logic. It made Overmono a fixture on best-of lists and a genuine headline draw.

One thing needs correcting here, because it circulates a lot. Good Lies was not nominated for the Mercury Prize. It did not appear on the 2023 shortlist, nor the 2024 one, and no amount of repetition makes the claim true. It is an easy mistake to make, because the album was exactly the kind of critically adored British record the Mercury tends to reward, and because one of Overmono's closest contemporaries did make that year's list. That contemporary is Fred again.., the Mercury-nominated contemporary whose 2023 shortlisting is a useful point of contrast rather than something to hang on Overmono. Good Lies earned its acclaim on its own terms. It simply did not get a Mercury nod, and a profile that respects the facts should say so.

What Good Lies did do was place Overmono firmly in the class of British electronic acts turning underground craft into festival-scale reach, alongside names like another festival-headlining producer with a jazz-schooled edge and the broader wave of UK producers making feeling festival-sized. It turned Overmono from a great live act into a great British album act as well.

"Pure Devotion" (2026): the second album, explained

Pure Devotion, Overmono's second album, was released on 7 August 2026 through XL Recordings. It is an 11-track LP, and it takes its name from the live-show series the duo launched in 2024, a detail that tells you a great deal about how it was made. Where many acts write in the studio and then figure out how to perform it, Overmono appear to have run the process in the other direction, letting the live show shape the record.

The lead single, "Lockup", was released alongside the album announcement in May 2026 and set the tone. It samples the Birmingham act Fast Relief and arrived with a video by Rollo Jackson, the visual collaborator inseparable from the Overmono aesthetic. As the first taste of the album, it signalled a record still rooted in the UK underground, still reaching into British source material and rave history, but built with the ambition of an act now playing to tens of thousands.

The most interesting thing about Pure Devotion is how it was made. According to reporting around the album, the brothers leaned into deliberately unconventional recording techniques to capture the atmosphere of a real room: re-amping sounds, manipulating tape, even running audio through damaged speakers to add texture and grit. The aim was to get away from the clinical cleanliness digital production can slip into and to make a record that feels physical, roomy and alive, closer to the live show that gave the album its name.

Pure Devotion also brings in collaborators who broaden the palette without diluting it. The poet John Joseph Holt appears, alongside Kindora, Ruthven and Rock Floyd, guests who add voice and character to a record that remains unmistakably Overmono's. Nearly three weeks into its release, Pure Devotion arrives not as a reinvention but as a deepening, two producers pushing further into the same idea that made Good Lies land, with more texture, more risk and a stronger sense of the room it was built to fill.

Live, not DJ: inside the Overmono hardware show

One question comes up more than almost any other about Overmono, so let us settle it: do they DJ, or do they play live? The answer is that Overmono are a live act, first and foremost. Their show is a two-person hardware performance, not a laptop-and-decks DJ set, and that distinction is central to why they are one of Britain's most sought-after festival bookings.

On stage, the brothers split the work. Tom handles synths, including the Oberheim OB-6, shaping the melodic weight of the set in real time. Ed works drums and modular gear, with hardware such as the Korg MS-20 among the machines, driving the rhythm and the low end from a physical setup rather than a pre-baked file. It is a genuine performance, and a world away from the beat-matching of a DJ set. That live-band framing is a large part of why Overmono can headline stages that would normally belong to guitar acts.

Then there are the Dobermans. The recurring dog imagery, developed with visual collaborator Rollo Jackson, has become one of the most recognisable motifs in UK dance visuals, playing across the LED screens behind the duo. Speaking to DJ Mag, Ed Russell described exactly that ambition, saying he wanted to "turn around mid-set and watch the Dobermans running through a field on the biggest LED screen." That live-first identity connects Overmono to the wider ecosystem that raised them. The same culture of physical, rave-built performance runs through the new wave of UK bass acts and was platformed, in its earlier days, by the Boiler Room ecosystem that platformed them and so many of their peers.

Overmono in 2026: Glastonbury legacy and a world tour

To grasp Overmono's current standing, look at what they did in 2025. They headlined and closed the West Holts Stage at Glastonbury on Sunday 29 June 2025, one of the festival's most prestigious slots, confirmation that a Welsh electronic duo who started in the underground had reached the very top tier of British live music. That year also took them through All Points East, Boomtown, AVA Festival, Love Saves The Day, the Warehouse Project and Alexandra Palace, a run of bookings that few electronic acts of any kind could match.

2026 has raised the stakes again. The album cycle opened with a headline show at the Old Royal Naval College in London on 7 August 2026, the same day Pure Devotion was released, billed at announcement as their biggest London headline to date. The festival calendar took them across Europe and North America, with appearances that included Primavera Sound in Barcelona, We Love Green in Paris, Lightning in a Bottle, Movement in Detroit and Down The Rabbit Hole in the Netherlands.

The autumn is where the album cycle peaks. Overmono headline Alexandra Palace in London on 28 October, then play the Warehouse Project in Manchester on 30 October, a date at the heart of where Overmono headline on 30 October, before closing the UK run at the Barrowlands in Glasgow on 1 November. A North American leg takes in the Hollywood Palladium on 25 September, Terminal 5 in New York on 9 October and History in Toronto on 10 October. It is a tour that maps the whole arc of the story: from a district of Monmouth to some of the largest rooms in the electronic world, on the strength of a live show and two uncompromising records.

Where Overmono sit in UK dance right now

Overmono matter because they are the clearest proof of an idea: that British underground dance, in all its garage, breaks, jungle and techno detail, can scale to the very top without being flattened into something generic. They did not soften their sound to get there. They took the swing and sub-weight of the UK underground, the exact palette that runs through the feel-good UK dance class of 2025-26, and they built a live band capable of headlining Glastonbury with it. It is why their name comes up whenever anyone talks about the health of British electronic music.

They also model a kind of career longevity that is easy to overlook. Both brothers spent years as respected producers under other names before Overmono existed, and in that sense they belong to a small group of artists who outgrew their original scene tags without abandoning what made them good, much like another producer who outgrew a scene tag. Truss and Tessela did not disappear. They fused, and the fusion turned out to be bigger than either part.

Speaking to DJ Mag, Ed Russell framed the whole project's forward-facing attitude simply, saying he would "never, ever want to make a tune today that sounds like it was made 20 or 30 years ago." That line is the key to Overmono. They are steeped in rave history, they sample it, they carry its breakbeats and its emotional charge, but they refuse to be a nostalgia act. They use the past as fuel rather than as a destination, and that is why, two albums in and headlining Alexandra Palace, they still feel like one of the most vital acts UK electronic music has.

FAQ

What are Overmono's real names?

Overmono are the brothers Tom Russell and Ed Russell, a Welsh electronic duo. Their full legal first names and birth dates are not publicly confirmed, so no reliable source spells them out in detail. What is on the record is that Tom is the elder of the two brothers, according to DJ Mag, and that the pair worked as separate producers before joining forces as Overmono.

Where are Overmono from?

They are from Overmonnow, a district of the town of Monmouth in Monmouthshire, south Wales, and the band's name comes directly from Overmonnow. The often-repeated claim that they are from Rogerstone is not supported by reliable sources. The duo are now based in London, though their roots are firmly Welsh.

What were Overmono called before?

Both brothers were established producers under other names. Tom recorded as Truss, working in techno, while Ed made rave, breaks and drum and bass as Tessela, best known for 2013's "Hackney Parrot". They also briefly collaborated as TR/ER from 2012, combining their initials, before settling on the Overmono name and beginning to produce together as a duo in 2015.

What label are Overmono on?

Overmono release primarily through XL Recordings, the independent British label that put out their debut EP "Arla" in 2016 and both of their studio albums. Separately, Ed Russell runs his own label, Poly Kicks, which he founded in 2013 and which issued early Overmono material, including the first release of "So U Kno" in 2021.

What is Overmono's most famous song?

"So U Kno", first released in June 2021, is Overmono's signature crossover track and the record that pushed them beyond the underground. Their debut album Good Lies, released in 2023, then broadened their audience further and reached No. 11 on the UK Albums Chart. Together those two releases mark the point where Overmono became a name recognised well outside the club scene.

Was "Good Lies" nominated for the Mercury Prize?

No. Good Lies, released on 12 May 2023 through XL Recordings, reached No. 11 on the UK Albums Chart and drew universal acclaim with a Metacritic score of 83, but it was not shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2023 or 2024. The idea that it was nominated is a common misconception. Their contemporary Fred again.. did make the 2023 Mercury shortlist, which is a useful point of contrast.

Do Overmono have a new album in 2026?

Yes. Pure Devotion, an 11-track LP, was released on 7 August 2026 through XL Recordings and is led by the single "Lockup". The album takes its name from the live-show series the duo launched in 2024, and reporting around it describes deliberately rough recording methods, including re-amping, tape manipulation and damaged speakers, used to capture a physical, room-like atmosphere.

Do Overmono DJ or play live?

Overmono perform a two-person live hardware show rather than a standard DJ set. On stage Tom plays synths, including an Oberheim OB-6, while Ed handles drums and modular gear such as the Korg MS-20, with the pair building their tracks in real time. The show features striking visuals, including their recurring Doberman imagery, created with longtime collaborator Rollo Jackson.

Did Overmono headline Glastonbury?

Yes. Overmono headlined and closed the West Holts Stage at Glastonbury on Sunday 29 June 2025, taking one of the festival's most prestigious slots and ending the weekend on that stage. It confirmed their status among the top tier of British live acts and capped a 2025 run that also took in All Points East, Boomtown, the Warehouse Project and Alexandra Palace.

Where can I see Overmono in 2026?

After an album-release show at London's Old Royal Naval College on 7 August 2026, Overmono headline Alexandra Palace in London on 28 October, the Warehouse Project in Manchester on 30 October and the Barrowlands in Glasgow on 1 November. A North American leg includes the Hollywood Palladium on 25 September, Terminal 5 in New York on 9 October and History in Toronto on 10 October.

Facts in this piece were checked against current sources in August 2026. If something has moved since, that is the nature of a living scene.