Burial interview @ Blackdown/Burial album

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Logos said:
Pretty much bugger all...when one thinks of foul play, omni trio etc overwhelmingly male.

In some ways it is about eyecandy but in other ways not...I think its hard to explain. I think in dubstep its about a desire for a mixed crowd a la warehouse parties of yore, so race as well as sex.

I also think the presence of women on the dancefloor physically articulates, or embodies, for a DJ or producer, the kind of balance between light/dark and dub/step you talked about above. Within the hardcore continuum, I get the strong impression that a gender balanced crowd has long been considered As A Good Thing in itself - but especially when the presence of women goes hand in hand with the ruffest music. Think AWOL or Metalheadz.

Don't we have to take seriously the role of a female population in a scenius, though? In a mixed scene, female desire is bound to shape production...
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
k-punk said:
Don't we have to take seriously the role of a female population in a scenius, though? In a mixed scene, female desire is bound to shape production...

Yes I agree.

But I'm not sure how I would think male desire properly.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Logos: Yes, exactly.
The idea of maintaining and creating a good, well balanced scene in which all races/genders are included seems to be quite an important idea... but obviously not to the extent that female producers are anything other than a novelty?
 

shudder

Well-known member
dammit, i'm going to have to wait until June to get my hands on this!!! It comes out May 15 in the UK, but I'm moving out of my current apartment at the end of May, so by the time it would arrive in the US I won't even be here! i'll have to consent myself with that breezeblock mix over 'n over 'n over...
 

DJL

i'm joking
Gender confusion is key to the problems I think. TV programs like Sex and The City have had a massive impact and change on how women (and men) think IMO. Men and women, rather than complimenting each other, now seem to be in competition. The popularity of gangster culture amongst men (and women) fed by TV such as The Sopranos and films like Scarface/Goodfllas is linked in. You are right k-punk it is a huge subject though. I believe we are living through an influential and incredibly exciting time in human history with mirrors such as technology now allowing us to examine ourselves in ways unimaginable. As a result experimentation (and its side-effects) have been rife. Now I believe it is the time to pull in the reigns and set ourselves down a morally right and good path else things will get really out of control.
 
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michael

Bring out the vacuum
I've been listening to that Breezeblock set a bit over the last few days and have to say that the thing it reminds me of most strongly is Vladislav Delay / Luomo. All the crackling and gurgling noise, the submerged sounds and also the slowed female vox moments.

The big point of differentiation is obviously in the beats / bass department, so I was mainly put in mind of the parts in the other projects leading up to the first Luomo 12"s (eg. Vladislav Delay's 'Anima', the Uusitalo album) where various elements of house and pop were being introduced but were still part of a ... mushy plateau that sounded like it was about to go somewhere, yet never did?
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
well i never, some discourse on dubstep ;)

@k punk - given your points on a feminine influence in garage, what's your take on the short lived "r&g" movement?
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Just to return to a point raised early (I think it was Autonomic...) Re: Distance's Saints and Sinners track... well worth checking out- a hard drum pattern a bit along the lines of a 138 bpm DJ Shadow (more off centre snares) with ambient string lines and kinda steppy percussive synths percolating like a memory of old 2step, with wordless female singing and giggling, almost like Shoegazer singing... a really Summery, fresh sounding tune, but with a certain hardness to it all the same. I'd love to hear this played out!
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
gek-opel said:
Just to return to a point raised early (I think it was Autonomic...) Re: Distance's Saints and Sinners track... well worth checking out- a hard drum pattern a bit along the lines of a 138 bpm DJ Shadow (more off centre snares) with ambient string lines and kinda steppy percussive synths percolating like a memory of old 2step, with wordless female singing and giggling, almost like Shoegazer singing... a really Summery, fresh sounding tune, but with a certain hardness to it all the same. I'd love to hear this played out!

Distance has a couple of nice bits about...that virus-y bass filter one that works because it is different (though wouldn't want to see too much of this style) and a nice thing called Minstral - which particulalry stands out for me, in the way that the last skull disco a-side did.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
michael said:
I've been listening to that Breezeblock set a bit over the last few days and have to say that the thing it reminds me of most strongly is Vladislav Delay / Luomo. All the crackling and gurgling noise, the submerged sounds and also the slowed female vox moments.

I agree that's one big comparison, which is why I said in my piece it was like Dub City as opposed to Vocalcity - but I think Burial are so rich that they make you hear many parallels. One way in which Luomo are a clear precedent is in the confident use of a full-length album. I can't think of many examples from the hardcore continuum/dance music/delete as appropriate where the album format is used so well. Burial seems designed for the album format - the consistency of tone, mood and sound make the whole thing much more than the sum of its parts.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
@k punk - given your points on a feminine influence in garage, what's your take on the short lived "r&g" movement?

Ah, that was so short-lived that it completely passed me by, I'm afraid. :) Enlighten me!

Since I can't answer that question lol maybe I could make some general remarks on gender, the hardcore continuum etc...

The key reference point is Simon's piece on 2step from 99 (in which both Bat and myself are quoted lol), Feminine Pressure. Think a lot of us probably regard that period of 2step as utopian because experimentalism, a certain mode of femininity and a large female audience came together. (Partly I supose I can't forgive dubstep for not being 2step.) This wasn't the feminine as organic, harmonious and earthbound but a cyborg femininity - what I call in my press release for Johnny's record the 'inhuman feminine'. Think Gek has highlighted above the problems that ensued once that 'feminine' side was re-naturalized as a certain saccharine soulfulness.

My grand thesis would be that the 'inhuman feminine' has receded as the rave elements have been bred out of the continuum. My claim would be that this has taken out the utopian/ anti-realist elements too. The name 'grime' is perfect I think for showing what's going on now - rubbing people's faces in an ultra-brutalist realism.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Also Burial works because his pieces are very emotive, emotionally textured, almost aching at times- I think the only other Dubstep full-length I've heard is Degenerate by Vex'd, which sounds amazing in 10 second chunks, but whch gets incredibly boring at any greater length. The only track which really works in the long run is "Lion", partly cos it engages on an almost-song level with chord changes and a semi-vocal presence. The rest of it is too cold, too clinical, and too damn Fruity-clean. It comes back to ambience again, and having a sonic signature, and too much dubstep is kind of arid (for home listening purposes)

I'd be interested to know what people think of Burial's Soundforged, hand-crafted beat structures, the way some elements are definitely out of time, in a literal "quantised" sense. I know that back in the day many 2step producers banged on about "swing" and the way that certain sequencers offered the ability to shift the beats subtly into and out of proper time to give the artificial impression of a real-world drummer's sense of elastic time, and to increase the ultra-funky syncopated nature of the thing. This seems almost like an echo of that technique (I know from reading the Blackdown interview that he's emulating the old 2step giants to some extent)-- but it ends up reminding me of the bits of Autechre that really pleased me, that kind of crippledness , without sounding like IDM. (I'm also reminded of the shimmering humanistic indistinct icy echo-worlds contained behind the industrialist beats on their '97 album "Chiastic Slide", those distant stabs and magical sounds like churchbells just out of reach...).
 
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Logos

Ghosts of my life
k-punk said:
I fully take all these points about dubstep working much better in a club space, but that still means it is lacking something for me. For instance, I heard jungle on cassettes long before I ever heard it played out, and it blew me away. Course going to the clubs took it to a whole new level...

Coming back to this...I think its a fair point but isn't it interesting in itself that the physicality of dubstep is, even more so than its predecessors over the last 15 years, an inherent, vital compenent of a whole understanding of the music. It makes the site-specific nature of a dance even more important. I don't particulalry see it as something one can make a negative value judgment about.

Though interestingly MP3's and rinse broadcasts are proving important in spreading the virus outside of the area where regular nights happen too.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
>Logos: not heard "Minstrel" yet, I think it must only be available on dubplate at present (its not even on SLSK)... Distance is quite an interesting case for me, cos he kind of moves between the most feminine, exotic and delicate stuff to tracks (I dunno the name of it cos its not out yet- I think its going to come out on Planet Mu) that have basically heavy-metal riffage going on! I've heard one of his tracked dropped in a live setting (I think during the middle of Digital Mystikz' set at the last DMZ night) and the atmospherics that he deals in sounded awesome, adding in a kind of cinematic grainy sampled choral backdrop that really lifted things up from the merely bass-centric.
 

tatarsky

Well-known member
gek-opel said:
>Distance is quite an interesting case for me...tracks that have basically heavy-metal riffage going on!

This is called, Traffic, I think, and yes indeed, it has the potential to drastically confuse skankers everywhere when the smoke clears and they realise that they're effectively headbanging.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Yeah, "Traffic", that's the one... I've got no problem with that, it extends dubstep into other regions, without sounding un-dubsteplike (I think the riffage is all distorted bass synths anyway, rather than some god-awful long hair with his axe out). It takes the aggression out of the kind of cold region occupied by a lot of dubstep and into a more raging, explosive kind of territory... I'm also certain a while back (maybe in Mark One's 3 deck mix?) I heard a synth bass version of the main riff from Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf"- dunno if that was intentional or not but I found that pretty amusing...
 

shudder

Well-known member
I was just thinking the same thing about Vocalcity! In fact, I was listening to the breezeblock set on headphones last night, and there's this segment maybe ~15 minutes in when the drums go seriously out of time (something like a rigid 4 where there should be a 3 or something.. can't really remember), and there's this bit in Tessio which (for like 10 seconds) does something so similar... Something like the dubby use of delay on beats, but done deliberately, if you know what I mean.

But of course the atmosphere, the sheen on Vocalcity is nowhere in the Burial stuff... Verrry different feel.

re: feminine pressure: imagine that when burial finally outs himself, he's a she. that'd be something. (yes yes, feminine != female, etc, but still).
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I think with Burial the "out of time-ness" or broken-down and crippled feel is due to the fact he is hand editing his(her?) drums in soundforge, rather than cutting individual drum sounds up and then placing them in a quantising sequencer which locks each sample into a given step (ie 8th notes or 16th notes)-or using a soft studio environment where drum samples are automatically assigned into locked positions in a groovebox type format--- instead I suspect he's (she's???) going by ear like you had to when editing on old hardware samplers... or by eye (as soundforge displays the wave form in front of you).

I ponder as to whether the more steppy sound here and elsewhere in the album-oriented dubstep stuff is going to have much impact on the half-stepping crew, or if this is a last gasp for this kind of beat structure. I think the latter would be a real shame, as too many centred snares becomes dull, and hyper-syncopation is a delight (so long as it centres on elegant and intricate rhythm itself, rather than going too far into obscure and unfunky sonics, messiness in other words, as in late era IDM)...
 
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