Sorry, no expletively named combos this time, but…
When we started BBO I think there was an implicit assumption that I would write about the electronic blips and bleeps end of the sonic spectrum. Well I’ve not really honoured that responsibility and I’m not sure why. Anyway, I’ll try and rectify that if I can.
Further, I don’t think we ever set out to review albums as soon as they hit the shops or whatever other outlet t’kids go for these days. And this certainly holds true for Burial’s Untrue which came out last year and has been making waves and accruing critical acclaim far and wide since then (even here - arrghhh!). For once this is totally deserved as it’s nothing short of spectacular.
Dubstep has gained an almost messianic status for underground British dance and electronica and Burial have been heralded as the genre’s leading exemplar. However, that didn’t stop me wincing when I picked it up and saw a descriptor with tags like R&B and Soul. On first listen I felt something groundbreaking was going on, but I wasn’t quite getting it. Then it found its way into my ears on the tram home on a dark night.
(WARNING: pretentious bollocks ahead)
Sometimes you really need a setting, an environment, a landscape to make sense of music. With the city streaking past (not quite clichéd images of headlights blurring into a continuous stream, but something like that) and surrounded by young gentlemen attired in hooded garments, the sheer beauty and grittiness of Untrue shook me senseless. The glitched soulful vocals, the grimy rhythms, interspersed with what literally sounds like bits of grit in the sampler, and the sweeping sensations bound up into the soaring melodies, left me shivering and tingling.*
You’ve got to raise a blog to music that does that…haven’t you?
*(Well, I did warn you).
Some Burial:
Buy Untrue here - I did!
angrybonbon
Hmm - interesting. More in a chin-strokery sort of way I think but I can see why it’s been raved about. Made to be played on a mobile phone on the G1?
Potential for sodcasting yes. But it really does grow. Highly recommended.
[...] might argue that this album isn’t particularly groundbreaking (in the same way as Burial’s Untrue might be). Admittedly, there is something early-90s here: the first half - more ambient, less jagged [...]