Vladislav Delay / Sly Dunbar / Robbie Shakespeare - 500-Push-Up [Sub Rosa 499 Promo]

Released via long standing label Sub Rosa as their cat.no. 499 is "500-Push-Up", the nine track album collaboration album by Finnish Electronica Dub artist Vladislav Delay who teamed up with Jamaican Dub legends Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare on drums and bass for the production of this longplayer. The result of this collaboration is an approx. 52 minutes excursion in Dub riddim culture, mostly introduced by classic soundsystem chatter for each of the nine cuts featured which are, unfortunately, not as organic and intriguing as one could've hoped for. Instead, the dynamic range seems to be cut off when it comes to top frequencies which results in a kind of muffled, hollow sound aesthetic whilst the whole production seems overly compressed - and partly distorted - to hold up in the loudness wars of today and once individual riddims have locked on to their groove there's not much of a sonic or musical evolution to be found apart from sparse and somewhat random and generic sounding FX used resulting in a quite static, somewhat desolate vibe. This said, the tracks on here might be well useful for DJ abuse when playing a set informed by Adrian Sherwoods harsher sound aesthetics and we can see them do dancefloor damage in the hand of selectors like DJ Marcelle but experienced in a full on album listening session the whole thing seems a bit bleak and lacks proper inspiration.