I have never actually heard anything by Burial before and he turns out to be one of those musicians whose stuff sounds exactly like everyone says it does. In the case of Burial that’s a good thing as everyone has been turning cartwheels over him – but what I’m trying to get across is that his music is really really describable. That doesn’t mean I’m going to try and describe it. Other people have talked about city autumns, urban blight, London in the small hours – all true! In his Guardian interview the guy basically says, yes, this is music for and about walking around at 5AM after a big night. And it is! It really is! It’s pretty beautiful too – I especially like the little showers of static and vinyl crackle that are like running yr fingers down old brickwork and feeling the cement crumble. Surely a lot of Burial’s critical success is based on how his music makes people grab for words?
I get the impression Burial’s older stuff was harsher than this – more gloom, less wondering melancholy, less vocals, even if the vocals here are inarticulate spirit talk at your ears’ edge.I’m reminded of what Kogan said in his column: “I think a lot of indie vocalists aren’t hearing a potential voice for themselves except in vocals that seem to be some sort of retreat.” – indie meaning boho-approved I guess. The piece of music Burial most reminds me of that I know is The Durutti Column’s “Otis” from The Guitar And Other Machines – one line of Redding, “Another sleepless night for me”, cut and chopped and pushed to the fringes and turned into a sad weakness.
My only problem is that this is very easy music to love, isn’t it? I mean, if you’re sleepless and walking around a city at 5AM almost EVERYTHING is going to be beautiful – there’s no mystery about that, hardly anybody’s about, you can let your defences down and drift. That doesn’t mean Burial shouldn’t freeze that mood and work from it, and he does it really well, but it’s like…there’s no struggle in the music? Don’t get me wrong, it’s lovely music, it just makes everything that follows it on shuffle seem that much more rushy. In this case “PYT” by Michael Jackson – great tune! Let’s extend the metaphor and say that PYT is like finding a shop open at 6AM and buying a Twix!
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. For me Burial’s music conjures up a more disturbing world of nocturnal (dis)quiet; possibly (and only very lightly) the sort you feel when sitting outside the Cross Kings at 2:30 on Sunday morning waiting half an hour for the 390 bus to tootle along – it is “quiet” and the sketchy populace go about their business but there is that grey blunted sword of “something might happen any second”; the corrugated fences across the way, the last revellers straggling around the corner trying to establish exactly where King’s Cross is, and the knowledge that something nasty, brutal and short is probably going on, unseen, 500 yards away. Then again the music on the first album was “less” explicable in that sense (apart from the concept of the drowned city) whereas with the new one he perhaps explains a little which maybe was better unexplained.
Hmm, I think I need to hear the first record (I was planning to anyway) – I can see what you’re saying but I don’t hear much menace, however subdued, in the music – EVERYTHING’s so muffled and numbed that it all sounds quite contented to me. Mind you I am in a spectacularly good mood at the moment so picking up on negative nuance is probably beyond me.
Me on the first one (and I note that I hoped there wouldn’t be a second album hem hem).
I find Burial’s stuff perfect for soundtracking those nocturnal moments listed above, but unusable the rest of the day…(similarly, I find that Galaxie 500 only has any real use-value in the dead of winter)…
I actually bought this in a shop yesterday – it was the LAST COPY LEFT in Piccadilly Virgin! I may get round to listening to it tonight, maybe at 5am.
I actually bought this on Bleep last night, just based on hearing ‘Archangel’ and ‘Raver’ which are both superb although re the former I’m a bit disappointed that several other tracks seem to have been constructed using the same compelling formula. Interesting tho because the tracks are quite short – he could’ve made three or four much longer/epic pieces combining and weaving together some of these pieces but seems to have opted for a relatively more accessible approach. I didn’t get the fuss about the first album but this one has several moments that instantly clicked and may prompt me to give it another chance.
“Surely a lot of Burial’s critical success is based on how his music makes people grab for words?”
YES. YES. seriously!
have written a bit about this on lj but srsly this album is not half as good as most dubstep! (though lots better than the first album which was REALLY boring in places.)
I think it’s fair to say that Burial is squarely in the ‘soundtracks for imaginary films’ camp of making square pegs for square holes. Which isn’t to say it’s not a great peg, and better than Here We Go To Sublime, which does a similar thing but for a totally different aesthetic, and not quite as well.
I’ve seen the light now. And it burns like heaven.