Album: Untrue
Artist: Burial
Born: South London
Released: November 2007
Genre: Dubstep
Music has the power to really get under your skin, and I experienced that feeling the first time I listened to Burial. For me, there's a personal connection with his music, having grown up in south London around the same time, and having been exposed to the same mid-90s dance music: hardcore, jungle and garage. Burial's music reminds of those times sat on the night bus or coming home in cabs after a night out, with the music still echoing around my mind and the city streets passing by. In his name, Burial, there's a sense of his musical mission: to unearth the ghosts of hardcore's past and allow them to speak from beyond the grave. When Burial started getting attention with his self-titled debut album in 2006, released on Kode 9's renowned Hyperdub label, there was a "nu rave" musical craze gaining momentum, spearheaded by The Klaxons. That said, whereas they were attempting to recreate rave music, glowsticks and all, Burial was taking a very different approach. His music is strongly linked to hauntology, with its vocal and ambient (rain, vinyl hiss) samples and haunting synths, which overlay the old school beats. There's a track (Gutted) on Burial's first LP that uses a vocal sample of Forest Whitaker in Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, as he talks about "ancient ways". This sense of nostalgia and a feeling of something have been lost intensifies even more on Burial's second LP, Untrue, as he tries to rediscover that hopeful feeling he once felt listening to old school jungle, rave and garage. Some tracks on his first LP, like Broken Home, are easily among his best work, but Untrue just has an even greater depth of feeling and more consistent pacing.
Music has the power to really get under your skin, and I experienced that feeling the first time I listened to Burial. For me, there's a personal connection with his music, having grown up in south London around the same time, and having been exposed to the same mid-90s dance music: hardcore, jungle and garage. Burial's music reminds of those times sat on the night bus or coming home in cabs after a night out, with the music still echoing around my mind and the city streets passing by. In his name, Burial, there's a sense of his musical mission: to unearth the ghosts of hardcore's past and allow them to speak from beyond the grave. When Burial started getting attention with his self-titled debut album in 2006, released on Kode 9's renowned Hyperdub label, there was a "nu rave" musical craze gaining momentum, spearheaded by The Klaxons. That said, whereas they were attempting to recreate rave music, glowsticks and all, Burial was taking a very different approach. His music is strongly linked to hauntology, with its vocal and ambient (rain, vinyl hiss) samples and haunting synths, which overlay the old school beats. There's a track (Gutted) on Burial's first LP that uses a vocal sample of Forest Whitaker in Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, as he talks about "ancient ways". This sense of nostalgia and a feeling of something have been lost intensifies even more on Burial's second LP, Untrue, as he tries to rediscover that hopeful feeling he once felt listening to old school jungle, rave and garage. Some tracks on his first LP, like Broken Home, are easily among his best work, but Untrue just has an even greater depth of feeling and more consistent pacing.
As well as nostalgia for hardcore's past, the music also evokes the sense of isolation that comes from living in inner-city South London. Near Dark, like most of the tracks on Untrue, was created in the dead of night when he (Will Bevan?) went out walking the streets looking for inspiration. Everything about Near Dark is inspired, especially its decaying 2-step beat and the weird and distorted vocal come-on ("I can't take my eyes off you"). I also love the beats on Archangel, and its time-stretched garage vocal sample; apparently the song was written after the death of Burial's pet dog, and there's definitely a strong sense of yearning in the vocals. Other highlights for me are Shell Of Light, with its uplifting R&B chorus that just appears out of nowhere near the end of the track, and the title track Untrue, with its fragile, desperate lyrics ("The way, I feel inside / it's all, because you lied") that sound like they're coming from a disembodied voice. In the middle of the album, the beat fades away and the intense ambient synths come to the fore, notably on Endorphin and In McDonalds. The album closes with another highlight, Raver, with it four-on-the-floor club sound that acts as a commentary on the death of the British rave scene. Burial's output has slowed considerably since Untrue, consisting of just the occasional single, EP or Thom Yorke collaboration, but nobody since has created dubstep or dance music that has this much emotional depth. Like New Order, Burial makes music that taps into the dark recesses of the human psyche.
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