I love very orthodox, super-classical steppers Dub: repetitive, stoic, physical. But I love the experiment even more: brave, unconventional, weird. Especially when sounds from different worlds come together and create something new and unheard. The more unusual, the more weird the fusion, the more exciting: Dub and arabic music, Dub and Balkan pop, Dub and Swedish folk songs - just to give you a few recent examples: all of them great combinations. But how is it with Dub and classical music? Can that work, or is that too far-fetched? Matthias Arfmann took part in 2006 Deutsche Grammophon Remixed a first attempt in this direction when he gave an official old Karajan recordings Dub-Treatment underwent. Which, by the way, thrilled me at the time (an enthusiasm that hardly anyone wanted to share with me). Now a second approach to integrate the supposedly incompatible: Op'ra Dub Style from Audio Art (One Drop / Irie Ites). The name suggests: Dub meets opera - embodied by the classic opera tenor Uly E. Neuens on the one hand and some superb DubProducers (TVS, Dub Spencer & Trance Hill, Aldubb, Dubmatrix, Dubbecame Dubble (Braintheft) and Tune In Crew) on the other side. The result of this clash is - well, how should I express it differently? - quite simply: brilliant! It's really fun to listen to this crazy experiment and to discover that opera singing, classical-looking compositions (but all of which were created exclusively for this album) and heavy duty Dub-Music sound congenial together, as if they were always meant for each other. This apparently self-evident fact that is not taken for granted is achieved on the one hand by Dub-Track and vocals are always fine-tuned, and on the other hand, opera singing is more of a melody than a word. Like an instrument, it fits seamlessly and harmoniously into the arrangement of the Dub a. The fact that Uly E. Neuens - a classically trained opera tenor who is at home on all the important opera stages in France - has been enthusiastic about reggae for many years may also be not entirely irrelevant. He has a good feel for the music of both worlds. He sang seven tracks for the album, another four offer remixes of the recordings and two tracks are on top as a bonus. The last one is a production by Aldubb with Uly's interpretation of the “Ode to Joy”. I think that's pretty good.
