Dub Colossus has re-entered our turbulent reality with the vibrant album “Dub Will Keep Us Together”. Founded back in 2008 by the late Nick Page, aka Count Dubulah, this dynamic global fusion project continues to thrive on dissolving borders. Operating as a defiant counter-movement against wars, climate chaos, and corruption, the music feels intensely vital, beautifully blurring Amharic, Spanish, French, and English over sturdy dub frameworks.
The title track, “Dub Will Keep Us Together,” drags you directly into a hazy, sultry underground lounge. A soaring lead melody dances over a thick low-end groove, capturing the dizzying vulnerability of absolute romantic surrender. Then, you hit the pavement. “Dub Conquers All” shifts the lens to communal resilience. You hear bright, staccato melodic bursts fighting through an earthy, hypnotic pulse an uplifting, physical strike against modern isolation.
The band leans into this collective frustration on the bright jazz-funk of “We Stand” and the bouncy pop-reggae anthem “Do We Have A Right,” directly challenging systemic inequality. They wrap heavy social justice concepts in empowering, resilient rhythms that completely command your nervous system. Shadows creep in naturally along the journey. “Ebo Dub” utilizes a meandering, slightly mournful pentatonic loop to brilliantly bottle the inescapable, heavy ache of homesickness. This melancholy bleeds smoothly into the trippy, delayed spatial echoes of “24 Carat Dub Affair” and the deeply rhythmic longing mapped out in “Consequences”.
Chaos eventually forces its way into the room. “And The Gods Made Dub” tosses every convention entirely out the window. It is a frantic drill ‘n’ bass fever dream where a twinkling, high-pitched loop clashes with massive syncopation and a multilingual reflection on spiritual liberation. The earthly and the divine collide directly in the sonic mess.
Nick Page conceptualized a beautiful framework for empathy here, continuously stacking deep bass against systemic global grief. The sheer density of this record leaves you wondering: if society is slowly cracking under the weight of its own noise, is locking into a shared groove our truest form of rebellion, or simply our favorite way to ride out the collapse?
