Burial "Untrue"

N

nomadologist

Guest
see I'm way too American for that, I love the prissy r&b shit, I can't stand those growling low ragga vocals!!

sadly, this is what all vocals attain to, for me:

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dHarry

Well-known member
Burial's a collaboration between kevin shields, brian eno, afx, jimmy cauty, goldie, steve gurley and david lynch (with interviews by k-punk) - can I claim my free hyperdub t-shirt? ;)

@ Bassnation - maybe it was a mistake to put Near Dark and then Ghost Hardware straight after Archangel - you need some non-vocal space to decompress after that initial love-bliss-rush. And then there's a trio of near beatless pieces, and by the time you get to Homeless you feel like you've heard it all before. So the sequencing means the album doesn't flow as well as it could.

But criticim aside, I still think this is a spectacularly original, powerful vision of post-rave sonic sorcery and affective engineering. (Even more incredible to think that it's a pure constructivist collage of cut-and-paste sound editing, if it's true that he's still mainly using SoundForge.) Definitely touched with genius.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
The opening of the album (ie tracks 1-4) is amazingly strong. Then it kind of becomes incoherent (though with decent ambient interludes) until "Raver" at the end. Realistically a lot of the 2step tracks in between ARE a bit messy and inelegant, a little too overstuffed with billowing vocals, yet not pop enough to actually make of them anything more than gaseous texture. Indeed what this album demonstrates is that Burial ought to head even further towards avant-garage-pop... as that is definitely where the strengths are on this record. However- his other mastery is of roiling fetid darkness (ie- the track "South London Burroughs") and as such his "darkside" album will probably be just as good, as it will in all likelihood reduce the gorgonzola effect somewhat...
 

bassnation

the abyss
see I'm way too American for that, I love the prissy r&b shit, I can't stand those growling low ragga vocals!!

sadly, this is what all vocals attain to, for me:

lol, cheesy! actually thats a bit unfair as i love a lot of rnb. but theres definitely a space in my life for ruff ragga chatting.
 

childrentalking

Well-known member
Gek: I'd say Etched Headplate and Untrue are the strongest tracks, so I disagree with a 'frontloaded' view of the album... rather, I think it's over rich for an uninterrupted listen, like eating a whole tub of ice cream in one sitting. more enjoyable if you put it back in the freezer and come back for the rest later... have you tried listening to the other tracks out of sequential order? I think every track up to and including the title track is incredible. bit of a dip after that.
 

bassnation

the abyss
Gek: I'd say Etched Headplate and Untrue are the strongest tracks, so I disagree with a 'frontloaded' view of the album... rather, I think it's over rich for an uninterrupted listen, like eating a whole tub of ice cream in one sitting. more enjoyable if you put it back in the freezer and come back for the rest later... have you tried listening to the other tracks out of sequential order? I think every track up to and including the title track is incredible. bit of a dip after that.

even those tracks sound unfinished to me - esp. compared to the first album. even sat here smoking a reefer listening to it loud, feeling nothing.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Etched Headplate is a favourite at the moment.

Except for the beginning - 'ees go' a lo' of love in eem.' H's and T's woman! Bloody 'ell. :mad:

That's a bit unfair isn't it? ;)
 

dHarry

Well-known member

swears

preppy-kei
I have Soundforge you know, and I can't believe how anyone would be arsed making tunes on it, they must take him fucking ages.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I have Soundforge you know, and I can't believe how anyone would be arsed making tunes on it, they must take him fucking ages.

Bear in mind there's probably a reduction in recanted creative decisions and concomitant timewastage due to the comparative unundoability of wave editor compositional commitments.

You must think first, before you move.

The agglutinative, palimpstesticles nature of his (their? its?) music reflects the unstrippabledownability of wave editor constructions.
 
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swears

preppy-kei
I'm sure he saves the component parts of tracks, before pasting them together.

It's not so much that anyway, just making patterns in the first place would be a pain.

I see what you mean about being restricted, although I suppose Soundforge is still not as basic as the gear people were using to make hardcore 15 years ago or whenever.
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I'm sure he saves the component parts of tracks, before pasting them together.

Damn - he's not a purist after all.

It's not so much that anyway, just making patterns in the first place would be a pain.

Yeah, what I would probably do is have a basic metronomic pattern to dump everything else on. Any audible leftovers could be minimised later on.

Depending, as you say, on whether he creates separate wavs or combines things from the start, pattern making might be easier than on some soft sequencers, where elements that are meant to work in unison are not given as meaningful a correlate on the screen.

I see what you mean about being restricted, although I suppose Soundforge is still not as basic as the gear people were using to make hardcore 15 years ago or whenever.

I guess restricted gear can help speed up working practice, as the few(er) options that you do have are mastered (more) quickly.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
I suppose Soundforge is still not as basic as the gear people were using to make hardcore 15 years ago or whenever.
That's true as far as features go but also in many ways I think gear has moved backwards. In terms of what they do do things like MPC60s are the absolute nuts. S1000s might seem really basic now but they've also got lovely analogue filters. Everyone using basic Atari STs for sequencing back then immediately had better MIDI timing stability than most PCs. Using real hardware synths gives you hands on creativity that's harder to get from plugins, and so on.

I'm not down on modern kit but it's not like that old stuff was all that primitive - and in many ways it was easier to get a good sound out of it.

Actually I've never used Soundforge - it doesn't do any multitrack stuff at all does it?
 
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