Take Don Letts’ word for it — when he is asked in a recent documentary film which dub music holds sway nowadays, he says there is nothing out there for him, nothing from JA, or the US, only Rhythm And Sound. And the cutting-edge originality of Burial, for one notable example amongst hundreds, is steeped in the Berliners’ aesthetic and musical innovations of the past fifteen years. Though a departure, Vertical Ascent retraces various signatures of the earlier styles — the fastidious density of sound, the massive bass and detailed upper registers (‘a frequency massage’, Ricardo Villalobos has called the album), the stripped, stepping repetitiousness, the seriousness.The striking differences stem from the qualities of live performance (the driving, clattering percussion in particular, and the loose, improvisatory approach), the exploded palette of sounds, including a trace of steel drums, something like a cuica — and of course most of all the fresh lineup. Vladislav Delay is a drummer and electronic musician from Finland — like von Oswald, trained in classical percussion (whilst the third member studied classical piano for twenty years) — who released a landmark album on Basic Channel’s Chain Reaction imprint, before working with a diversity of artists (under pseudonyms like Luomo and Sistol), from Massive Attack to the Scissor Sisters. On Vertical Ascent he plays home-made metal percussion. From Munich, Max Loderbauer was a partner in the ambient duo Sun Electric. Behind the scenes his work has ranged between Tresor and Can’s Spoon Records.