Om Unit – Acid Dub Studies III: Acid litany under the sign of Bass Music :: Ondarock reviews

Twelve years of activity and ten albums to the active, not to mention the parallel projects (Dream Continuum, Richie Brains) and the aka (Mahakala, 2tall, Philip D Kick). Om Unit, aka Jim Coles, is certainly not one who loves to be quiet. Born in 1980, after spending adolescence to tinker championships to generate jungle Forsennata and primordial, once the thirty years have started to channel the accumulated baggage, passing from the spippalament to a construction phase, bursting in the undergrowth club With an entry that is anything but quiet: the one in the Fabric world, the historic London local who with his collection of new promises “Elevator Music Vol. 1” gave birth to the young author. An artist who, rather than drawing from Club-culture in the strict sense, it refers to tradition SoundSystem: that litanian deeply bass-oriented (not surprisingly also known as Bass-Music) built on street witchcrafts such as Dubstep, Jungle, Footwork And UK-Basswith that unmistakable metropolitan vein that sculpted the British electronics between the late zero years and the beginning of the ten years.

“Acid Dub Studies III” continues and stratifies the path of the two previous chapters, alternating codes acid of Roland TB-303 extraction with liturgie dub in the back, direct legacy of the Jamaican masters of delay. The emotional summit is perhaps “Lost and Found”, and to the substratum dub-acid flanks a lyricism from ballad Looking back. But also the subsequent “usurper” does not joke: a rhythmic intertwining from science of beatwhere reverberated magniloques and sidereal echoes dance above telluric sub-sculptures, deep vibrations modeled on incalculable masses of low frequencies.

To weigh is perhaps the absence of a coherent texture: acid and dub share roots analog powerful, but here only partially evoked. The result sounds more slender than what the prophets of Jah or psychotropic sailors of the future have been able to evoke. Then missing is that pushed to risk, that desire to transform the sound into magmatic flow or into a visceral slit. More a stylistic exercise than an authentic incursion, even if this could already be sensed from the title. Yet, the experience it transmits, although not burning, remains prepared and equipped with a dignified artisan lucidity.

23/04/2025