Burial
Untrue
Hyperdub, 2007
*** out of five
In trying to research London England’s dubstep producer Burial, and after listening to the new album, Untrue, I discovered a few things:
1. Burial is completely anonymous. Apparently only a few people know the man/woman/group’s true identity. Why the anonymity? According to internet lore it’s because he/she/they want to “let the music do the talking”, that sort of thing. A little pretentious, yes? Oh well, it’s probably good for business, and I imagine that the man signing the cheques has a pretty good handle on who he/she/they is/are.
2. Untrue is Burial’s second album, and the first eponymous album was released in 2006. Apparently the first album was a home-made affair, with cutting and pasting done in an engagingly crude fashion. Untrue also has this makeshift air: the beats lurch and sway in an almost arrhythmic fashion, like a piston shaft that’s slightly out of caliber. Laid on top are vinyl pops, ambient keyboards and found sounds. The vocal snippets, when I can make them out through the miasma, seem to speak about longing and loneliness.
3. The music that I once called jungle, then drum and bass, is now called dubstep. It’s a form of music that I knew best through my Urban Tribe EPs, and Untrue has forced me to pull them out again after many years in my record rack. Happily, they still sound fresh and contemporary. Or is it the other way around?
4. This kind of music, sometimes quick-paced and beat driven, sometimes dubby and ambient, hasn’t really changed much over the years. There are echoes of some old Ninja Tunes types, like DJ Food, and hints of the seminal Kruder & Dorfmeister, especially from their excellent Peace Orchestra side-project. But really, considering that I hadn’t dabbled in the genre much for the better part of a decade, I would have possibly expected a greater evolutionary shift.
5. Fans of the genre have been hailing Untrue as the dubstep release of the year, or possibly decade. This fact alone speaks volumes about the state of the London garage scene. True, Untrue exudes soul in a genre that’s usually devoid of feeling, but does that put it in a league with What’s Going On? I’m not convinced. It’s a dandy album; a fine period piece, and Burial is to be congratulated for his/hers/their skill in sound manipulation. However, if this is the best that the genre can produce, then there’s an unmistakable feeling that the dubstep genre, or whatever we’re calling it these days, may have hit something of a creative brick wall.
Review by Greg Hood-Morris
Agree? Disagree? Email Greg at criticizegreg@gmail.com
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