Burial "Untrue"
- Thread starter Blackdown
- Start date
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
oh yeah
Lol middlebrow fail.
My only problem with burial is that he's boring.It's dance music semiotics, all cypher.I've never managed to listen to a whole track all the way through without knowing what it was. As such it goes in the same category for me as most artist's video. One idea, executed badly.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
will probably slaughtered for making a false comparison, but if we're going for current critical darlings, then someone like Actress is a good example of someone who does have tons of ideas, and whose tracks do sound different from each other. To me he's the real deal, a proper auteur - Burial is someone who's getting steadily diminishing returns off one or two ideas, well executed though, I'd say.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i loved the early eps, and the first album, but everything since, esp the weak vocal tunes on the 2nd album which were like limp attempts to create new versions of space rider or roy davis jnr's gabriel (i dont think burial should try and make dancefloor tunes), have made me think hes just rehashing increasingly weaker versions of himself, over and over and over. not heard the new stuff, and i admit i stopped paying full attention a while ago, but ive a feeling it wont be that different, or as good as what he did before. glad hes cultivated this kind of auteur career/status for himself, good for him and kode 9, but im not that interested anymore. he seems to just be making music for the burial cult who will basically accept anything he gives them whereas before it seemed to be something even he didnt expect to be making, regardless of all the romantic concepts about pirate radio and the london dance trajectory and so on.
id like him to do a song thats just pure crackle and nothing else lol.
id like him to do a song thats just pure crackle and nothing else lol.
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I think the big difference between Aphex and Burial is that Aphex is a lot less closely engaged with the genres he borrows from - basically he picks a trope here and a structure there to use, but is very much using them to create something that stands independently of the genres. Burial's stuff is built on a much more subtle and complicated relation with UKG etc, he kind of hovers between being an example of garage, being about garage, and using garage elements as a way of doing something different.
Talking about "one idea", I dunno, I mean he's writing tunes not philosophy books. If you're finding that he's getting boring and predictable I'd say that's because the tunes aren't doing it for you any more (or even because the tunes were never doing it for you but the initial idea was cool enough that you didn't mind) not because he hasn't completely revised his aesthetic. Plenty of people can stick with the same basic sound palette for a lot longer than a couple of albums and a bunch of LPs without people batting an eyelid...
The idea that he's deliberately playing up to the broadsheet press just seems way off, to be honest - maybe he's just using those sounds because he likes them?
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
i'd agree. one of the few producers who i virtually always find inspirational in terms of ideas/the way he sets things out, in addition to sounding very good.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
SecondLine
Well-known member
tbh the same principle of repetition/difference holds for both (i.e. enough change to keep it fresh, not so much that there's no consistency) - holds for anything really - but where you set your threshold obviously varies wildly.
Just a thought experiment though, would you level the same criticism at somebody who made fucking great 2 step for a few years in the late 90s/early 2000s? 'they just use...this swing on every single track..."
He has a language which is unique and very strong with the potential for a lot of internal difference, he explores that difference. It sounds samey to the unsympathetic/disinterested listener in the way that - on a broader scale - any dance music does to somebody brought up on Mozart.
SecondLine
Well-known member
there is always a backlash on here
Trillhouse
Well-known member
IMO all Burial really did was combine elements UKG with the aesthetics of ambient music like Biosphere or Tim Hecker, but the result was something original and unique in it's own right. Personally I love his first few releases, for what they are. I don't read much in the way of music journalism so what's been written about him bares no affect on my listening.
What I don't get about the Burial hate exhibited ITT is it seems to be more directed at what others have said about, or put upon him, rather than his music. That seems little disingenuous to me.
Or that he has a signature sound and he sticks to it. Well that could be said of the majority of producers. Especially ones who have created their own lane so to speak, call then auteurs if you want. Or is it again a case of disappointment because what he's been hyped up by others as being more than that.
What I don't get about the Burial hate exhibited ITT is it seems to be more directed at what others have said about, or put upon him, rather than his music. That seems little disingenuous to me.
Or that he has a signature sound and he sticks to it. Well that could be said of the majority of producers. Especially ones who have created their own lane so to speak, call then auteurs if you want. Or is it again a case of disappointment because what he's been hyped up by others as being more than that.
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Can you really divorce the crackle and general enya-crying-by-a-bonfire atmospherics from the music though? Im not sure to be honest. It does sometimes feel like the musical equivalent of a hipstamatic setting but in reality its done so artfully it never quite drops to that level.
Having said that, you can almost imagine someone releasing an App that lets you 'Burial-ise' your music by putting rain and wood-fire samples at the start of your tracks.
grizzleb
Well-known member
That's true though I think that it isn't in the sense of being just one idea but rather an idea that transcends itself or something. The best producers can sound wildly different whilst still retaining some sense of singularity of purpose, or unity of functional parameters or something like that. As in, they create the links inherent in the disparities in their own sound as they change it and move it in different directions.
I don't know if that applies to Burial or not as I've never had much interest in his style really. Garage and Jungle were never important signifiers for me so I think that has much to do with my ambivalent response.
Sectionfive
bandwagon house
+1
If he is the new Todd Edwards I doubt he would mind.
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Sectionfive
bandwagon house
recommend going back and having another read of his Blackdown interviews btw. If you cant find new in his music any more there is still a lot to be gleaned from them