Mental Overdrive

Mental Overdrive serves as the chief solo alias for Per Martinsen, counted among Norway's most productive and impactful techno artists. Across his output he has covered everything from pounding rave-driven hardcore to colorful cosmic disco while preserving an even mix of wit and sophistication. Since launching his work in 1990, Martinsen issued a series of 12-inch EPs of fierce, club-oriented hardcore techno through the respected Belgian label R&S, among them 12000 AD (1990), The Second Coming (1991), Move! credited to Confusion Club (1991), and The Love EP (1992).

Beginning in 1994, he started issuing atmospheric techno singles via Illumination, the duo he formed with Nicholas Sillitoe. The following year Mental Overdrive put out the single "Disto Disco," whose B-side "Faith" was co-written with R&S artist Outlander, widely known for the 1991 classic "Vamp." The A-side later featured on the project's debut album Plugged, which appeared on Martinsen's own Love OD Communications imprint and reflected a clear evolution: the raw, distorted hardcore sound remained, yet additional cerebral touches drew the record nearer to the spirit of Warp's Artificial Intelligence series. In 1996 Martinsen revealed his playful side through the limited conceptual release Unplugged, whose tracks consisted of silent reinterpretations of the material on Plugged.

Mental Overdrive joined the Virgin roster in 1997 for the EP About Jazz, whose house and disco leanings marked a pronounced departure from earlier material. That release preceded the album Ad Absurdum, which sustained the lighter, funkier trajectory. Martinsen then paused Mental Overdrive activity for several years, concentrating instead on Frost, the more pop-oriented electronic duo he shares with his wife Aggie Peterson, and on Illumination, which delivered two albums via RCA. After the 2003 appearance of the Me EP on Love OD, he moved to the Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound and issued the full-length 083, highlighted by the single "Diskodans." In 2005 the same label gathered his early R&S recordings onto the compilation CD The Phuture That Never Happened. Two years afterward the single "Spooks" surfaced on Prins Thomas' Full Pupp imprint and subsequently appeared on the next Smalltown album, 2008's You Are Being Manipulated, a record that aligned comfortably with the label's other adventurous dance artists such as Bjørn Torske and Kim Hiorthøy while retaining its distinctive Mental Overdrive character.

Martinsen kept issuing Mental Overdrive singles on Full Pupp and Love OD while also contributing to Rune Lindbæk's Meanderthals project. In 2012 he released the EP Man with a Movie Camera, containing music originally scored for a 1996 screening of the Russian silent film of that title; the same program included selections by Biosphere that later surfaced on the 2001 remaster of the classic album Substrata. Mental Overdrive returned to Love OD for the 2013 album Cycls and for 2014's Everything Is Connected, which collected several previously issued EPs. In 2016 the Full Pupp sublabel Rett I Fletta issued a fresh edition of Plugged drawn from alternate mixes taken directly from the original DAT tapes.