Bristol duo reveal their process and share a track from their new EP.

Having found kindred spirits in each other’s approach, Jim “Om Unit” Coles and Sam “Binga” Simpson began collaborating in 2013 with the Small Victories EP for Exit Records. Remixes followed and last year a new joint effort under the name BUNIT, an ongoing series of EPs.

TransPacific is the second BUNIT release, and the pair’s most daring to date with four tracks of ambient noise, grime-inflected jungle, reese bass, and Dance Mania swagger. It’s a perfect example of why they’ve been FACT favourites over the past few years.

Ahead of the release on March 18, FACT is premiering EP track ‘Windmill Kick’, a 3-minute homage to British dance music. You can pre-order the EP via Bandcamp and read words from Simpson below about how the EP and track came together.

“We approached this EP with the idea of having faith in a process. It’s easy to become overly focused on the results of music making but often the best music happens when that end-product is completely out of mind. So before we even thought about making any actual ‘music’ we spent a full day in the studio plugging synths into tape delays, creating feedback loops between microphones and distortion pedals, running live drums through cheap mixing desks – basically just playing, making weird sounds for the fun of it without any self-editing or expectation. And of course, because it was super enjoyable doing that, we got loads of good sounds made – including the raging bass that makes up the main hook of ‘Windmill Kick’ – and those sounds ended up being used throughout the EP, helping to hang the whole thing together.

‘Windmill Kick’ is in some ways a homage to the most influential forms of British dance music. Obviously the square wave bass has that grime flavour – although pushed right to the edge of sanity – and the chopped up breaks and 808 subs link back to jungle, while there’s something about the more melodic central section that hints at classic acid house – it might just be me, but I can definitely hear an echo of ‘Altered States’ in there. There’s diva vocals and pizzicato strings from the rave era, and MC shouts from the heyday of tape-pack dances, but hopefully none of these reference points dominate; they’re all twisted into new shapes, rather than regurgitated as pastiche. It’s always a fine line to walk, but the reaction we’ve had from both DJs and dancers suggests this one is riding the boundaries pretty well.”