Any release combining the talents of dub-ambient-house titans Vladislav Delay, Max Loderbauer (NSI, Sun Electric), and Basic Channel/Chain Reaction/Rhythm & Sound’s Moritz von Oswald, one of the chief architects of the sub-bass sub-genre, automatically comes with impossibly high expectations. Ravers and clubbers might find the four tracks (each called “Patterns”) on Vertical Ascent unsuitable as party jams, despite the trio’s dedication to repetitive percussive detail. Fans of Jan Jelinek’s techno-jazz-funk group experiments might also find this music, though rooted in some of the same Euro prog-rock innovations of the 1970s and 1980s, a bit tepid for their tastes. The value of this project, then, is best seen as a search for how to move electro-acoustic studio production into new levels of sophistication without sacrificing any of the fun that got us all hooked in the first place.