VARIABLE UNIT
Handbook For The Apocalypse (Wide Hive)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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Exciting, stimulating, provocative, and sometimes downright frightening, San Francisco's VU, or Variable Unit, mix acid jazz with hip-hop, and their messages aren't the kind you can take casually. While some are scary, futuristic sci-fi scenarios, most are about current and past injustices of the upper-class and its government and police forces against the common people. It's not all about the whites oppressing blacks, though there's certainly that, too.

The original jazz music is coupled with samples of speeches by politicians from both sides of the peace issue, news sound bites from civil rights demonstrations of years past, and many other sources that never seem to be there to be cute and clever. They are there to advance the stories. The central theme is about the state of the conscience of the nation, as a man takes a walk with his young son and the boy asks him how things got to be like this. He asks pop if he has any accountability, like, for example, voting for the Green Party and helping put Bush in the White House. In another song, a man explains that he was on a journey to his soul, but the police just pulled him over for speeding, despite the fact that he wasn't even driving. He was writing poetry, expressing dissatisfaction, presenting the opposing viewpoint of Variable Unit, one which would probably infuriate the late night conservative talking heads if they could only understand a word of it.

It's different, though, and that's usually been enough to draw fire. Actually, this is far more than different from the "acceptably rebellious" hip-hop on the market because it's written so intelligently, not just saying "I'm pissed" but saying "YOU should be pissed because THIS is being done by THAT group via THIS method" and all but giving out private phone numbers. It's powerful and - horror of horrors - thought provoking, the sort of thing that's occasionally drawn covert CIA action. Catch them while the official record still says they ever existed. And pay close attention to every word.

© 2003 - DJ Johnson