Om Unit
Acid Dub Studies
- Released
- 2021
- Format
- Vinyl, LP, Album
- Label
- Not On Label (Om Unit Self-released) · ADS001
hardcore-continuumaciddubjungle
Electronic AcidDub
View on Discogs ↗ Related titles
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Joker (5) & 2000F & J Kamata Digidesign / You Don't Know What Love Is Joker and Om Unit are both nodes on the hardcore continuum — Joker's purple sound mutation and Om Unit's D&B/footwork/dub synthesis are different routes through the same Reynolds-mapped lineage. -
Plastikman Musik Om Unit's acid work draws explicitly on the 303 lineage — Chicago Phuture → Plastikman → this record is one continuous chain of the same squelch applied to different rhythmic frameworks. -
Beatrice Dillon & Call Super Inkjet / Fluo Beatrice Dillon and Om Unit both apply non-European rhythmic thinking to UK club music — Dillon via West African polyrhythm, Om Unit via footwork's Chicago-African-American traditions.
Jim Coles — Om Unit — has built a career that is effectively the hardcore continuum embodied in a single discography: drum and bass, footwork, jungle, dub, and acid, each genre not abandoned but accumulated. Acid Dub Studies (2021) is the explicit statement of that accumulation — the Roland TB-303 acid squelch (Chicago, Phuture, “Acid Tracks” 1987) applied to dub reggae’s spatial logic (reverb as depth, the bass as the immersive frequency Reynolds describes as “womb-time”).
The fact that a 2021 record can combine elements from 1987 Chicago acid and 1970s Jamaican dub without sounding like pastiche is a consequence of Om Unit treating both traditions as living vocabularies rather than historical references. The acid squelch and the dub bass show up here as tools for making music that exists outside the genre categories that currently market it, which is the only honest reason to reach for either of them.