About four years ago, my good friend Jess turned me on to the sounds of Bonobo, Orbital’s Blue Album and Sakura by Susumu Yokota.I had the good fortune to bump into Jess again this Christmas; where one again he turned me on to more electronic goodness – this time in the shape of Burial's second album Untrue.
Already sited as the leading proponent of the emerging Dubstep scene, and yet clearly outside of it, Burial is quite unlike anything I have heard for a really long time. Dubstep is born out of Grime and the UK Garage scene, two genre’s I know next to nothing about.
However, from the moment I heard Burial’s second album Untrue I was hooked on the brooding darkness of swirling synths, pared down, syncopated, almost corroded beats and the warped use of forlorn Garage samples. Many tracks feature loops of a simple vocal, distorted many times over so it rarely sounds the same way twice. The bass plays a big part of many tracks as in Drum and Bass, but this is much more sombre territory than the frenetic Jungle-ism of the producers beloved genre.
Burial himself is something of an enigma. He doesn’t play a live set or DJ and rarely gives interviews. Championed by Kode9 of Hyperdub records it seems Burial will be able to lurk in the shadows and produce more of these amazing soundscapes.
The highlights of the album are Archangel, Ghost Hardware, Etched Headplate and the title track, which evoke a melancholy feeling of urban sprawl and decay, washed out by an insistent rain. If there were a soundtrack to travelling south London’s less known streets in the pre-dawn then this is surely it. Unfortunately the later half of the album loses its focus slightly but Untrue is till a rare album that merits attention of those seeking to discover new musical horizons.
An amazingly pared down, unique creation, not without flaws but at the same time incredibly emotive.
8 out of 10
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment