PadaEtc

Emperor Penguin
How has Burial dated for you?

6 years since his debut and 5 since untrue how do people reckon they have held up?

I still love a few tracks but I don't really hold them in as high regard as I used too.

I assumed at the time that years on that they would still sound fresh in a similar fashion to how the Illmatic does for me - but actually they sound a little dated now.

Is it because of the huge amounts of copy-cat productions that have followed or simply that they were very "of time" and never had real staying power. I'm leaning to the latter right now but i'm not sure how much effect the VVVs and Synkros of this world have had.
 
Last edited:

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I've actually started to love the debut more than Untrue for some reason. This was one of the first dubstep albums I ever heard, and truthfully, I never thought that highly of it at the time save for a few songs. But now I spend time caught up in the seeming 'erraticism' of the production.

Whereas, all this new stuff, perhaps due to the copycats or discovering garage (me being in the US and all), now has me look at it like "... Eh."
 

connect_icut

Well-known member
I unreservedly love everything he's done and it just keeps getting better, as far as I'm concerned. And it's not like he hasn't been active over the last five years. That last EP was bonkers. Every time he releases something, I buy it right away and I'm always knocked off my feet by how great it is. Dated doesn't even come into it.

So, yeah, I'm a fan.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
first album and those early eps are still classic for me, 2nd album was never as good as the first imo, and ive kinda stuck with that opinion since then - its good he has his own sound so you know burial pretty much as soon as you hear it but it seems like hes done as much as he can with it at this point.
 

rrrivero

Well-known member
I unreservedly love everything he's done and it just keeps getting better, as far as I'm concerned. And it's not like he hasn't been active over the last five years. That last EP was bonkers. Every time he releases something, I buy it right away and I'm always knocked off my feet by how great it is. Dated doesn't even come into it.

So, yeah, I'm a fan.
this, except I didn't care for the massive attack collab. Otherwise, shit just doesn't get old for me. I still rinse Untrue and Burial in the car when the mood is right. Definitely think the self titled was better, but Untrue I hold in high regards as well. Last EP was just immense
 

Alfons

Way of the future
I still love a few tracks but I don't really hold them in as high regard as I used too.

I assumed at the time that years on that they would still sound fresh in a similar fashion to how the Illmatic does for me - but actually they sound a little dated now.

Is it because of the huge amounts of copy-cat productions that have followed or simply that they were very "of time" and never had real staying power. I'm leaning to the latter right now but i'm not sure how much effect the VVVs and Synkros of this world have had.

I'm pretty much in this boat, I ascribe it to the copycats and a lot of the post-dubstep things but also just my personal tastes changing.

Haven't really liked a lot of the more recent stuff, although the Four Tet collab, "Nova"?, I thought was pretty good. Didn't he say at the time of Untrue that he had a whole albums worth of darker stuff? Think it would be pretty interesting to hear that kind of stuff.

I prefer "Burial" over "Untrue" these days. I'm not in the mood for the albums a lot these days but when I do I still find them amazing (also its more fall/winter music than spring/summer stuff to me). But interestingly a lot of times I go for the Kode9 album preview mixes instead of the albums themselves. Despite, or maybe because of, all the MAH hyperbole and a tingly bit of nostalgia, the mixes are pretty great. That cheesy Forrest Whittaker soundbite and other bits is so good. Also, "Stairwell"

.

Anyways, still one of my all time favorite musicians/albums and the music is pretty dear to me.
 

hucks

Your Message Here
I still listen to the first album and bits of the 2nd, but my favourite tracks of his are new ones. Street Halo is probably my favourite Burial track, though I like loads of them. And the new EP is his best since South London Boroughs.

I don't listen to any post dub step stuff really so I haven't become bored of his sound through inferior repetition. I'm basically a massive Burial fanboy, is what it boils down to.
 

dd528

Well-known member
I can definitely hear how those two LPs sound a bit dated. I think it's more a matter of them sounding so very unlike anything else when they were released, whereas now they no longer have the shock of the new.

At the same time I think that he has absolutely succeeded in advancing his sound on various EP releases, solo and collaboratively. Although the Kindred EP is shorter in running time than those acclaimed albums, I think in many ways it is much wider and more sophisticated in scope, and there is an increased mastery of the technology evident, which I appreciate.

I am always anticipating what he will release next, and I never seem to be disappointed tbh.
 

Dusty

Tone deaf
It's completely the other way round for me. The first album is timeless. Still skeletal, still haunting, and it takes me back to the shock of first hearing it. Everything that has come afterwards has struck me as a lack of progression and a rehashing of the same concepts. (I'm not saying its bad, just more of the same).

I'm sure just after the second album came out he said he was going to move on and the next material would be unrecognisable as Burial... or words to that effect. But the latest EPs have done nothing to follow up on that promise.

I had imagined/hoped for something akin to Zombys 'where were you in '92' - given Burials fascination with Jungle.

I've avoided all the copycats, as soon as anyone sounds remotely like him I just switch off (clubroot?)
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I would agree. Everything from Burial as far as from the EPs always strikes me as cheapened. He tries these little tricks, like the pulsing intro to NYC to simulate descending stairs into a club/the tune, but what he's lost, and I maintain this... is his more cheesier emotive powers.

My favorite tune from Burial might be... untitled2 from the Benji B Hyperdub showcase back in... was it 09? The carnival style melodies, the constant warping of the Ne-Yo sample... I was hoping that if anything, Burial was learning from his peers on the label, and trying to make his elusive and 'haunting' qualities into a more starkly vivid sound. Equally dark, but less focused on hiding behind something and being subdued, and more in your face. Almost a sort of gothic hardcore, but by taking the concepts of hardcore, and not the cliches?


Then again, 'stadium burial' might be the scariest concept in the world.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
basically hes not far off from becoming that stock music journo phrase, a parody of himself.

or maybe not even that, hes just become a bit boring and exposing his limitations.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I was never entirely sold on Burial, or at least I was never as awed and enthused by his music as multitudes of others seem to be. But I still love the fact that he doesn't sound like anyone else - the predictable imitators can never even REALLY replicate his sound, because if they got too close they'd just be blatantly ripping him off.

Nowadays its thoroughly off-putting for me to hear a producer using pitched-down vocals (particularly pitched-down, since its such an obvious attempt at indie-emo injection) in their post-dubstep tune, just seems like such a garish cliche. It's interesting, too, since I think its often an attempt to take joy out of or to make tougher/more masculine an R'N'B vocal (while simultaneously attempting to retain the sexy/'fertheladies' aspect of it and save dubstep from the perpetual sausage-party boogie man) - whereas with garage, i.e. Todd Edwards, the vocals are routinely pitched up, to INCREASE the sense of joy and excitement in them. Not that melancholy and masculinity is alien to R'N'B, its just interesting how post-dubstep uses those samples, how it fits them into the generally quite miserablist, churning aesthetic. I think that might be part of the reason why post-dubstep fails to satisfy those who are into 'real' garage and 'real' dubstep - its a sort of fudged halfway house between the two.

Burial is surely the one who brought R'N'B samples into dubstep, and into vogue (even if he was inspired by 2-Step), and so his legacy has tarnished his music. But in Burial's music there is at least a fuller engagement with the swooning, sobbing emotions he seems to be intending to evoke - although there is something misty and wishy-washy about his sound (all that reverb, all those snatches of dialogue), it is simultaneously completely committed to creating an atmosphere.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Just came across this interruption to an earnest online discussion about how Burial makes his beats (an interesting question to ponder, as ever):

"Must be an European thing, sounds wack to me."
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
brilliantly, scott walker talks about burial in the new stool pigeon when he gets asked if hes been listening to dubstep/hyperdub or diff kinds of electronic music. this might be a sign i need to get with the times but never would i have thought back in 2005 that scott walker would be asked about burial.
 

connect_icut

Well-known member
brilliantly, scott walker talks about burial in the new stool pigeon when he gets asked if hes been listening to dubstep/hyperdub or diff kinds of electronic music. this might be a sign i need to get with the times but never would i have thought back in 2005 that scott walker would be asked about burial.

It's funny because I was just thinking there was a similarity between recent Burial and recent Scott - all those episodic, multi-part epics.
 
Top