Burial interview @ Blackdown/Burial album

[SIZZLE]

Tate: Richard Serra comparison is bang on. Being overwhelmed, encapsulated and lost in this physical sound is a major part of the experience, one might even argue *is* the experience or at least is the unique and exciting part of it.

Also worth noting is that many dubstep tracks put some of the key rhythmic points (that make it feel like 140 as opposed to 70bpm) in the sub range. Therefore the tracks sound twice as fast when heard in a club. That was one of my major discoveries on hearing the music loud, and I found the music a lot less plodding and boring as a result.

I just stopped smoking weed, something I do quite a lot of normally, and compulsive message boarding seems to be a side effect. Must... sleep...

 

[minikomi]

you can still add a bit of swing in highly quantised sequencers by adding bits of silence before the samples youre sequencing

a dramatic pause if you will

 

[shudder]

re: the club-specific physicality of dubstep

This is something I've also yet to experience, being a mainly MP3 fan. Like SIZZLE, I'm also very much convinced by Tate's Richard Serra comparison... For me (as a total outsider to the sound really) it remains a compelling bit of the mythology, and makes me want to experience it live goddamit. However, it really sort of does drive home the anti-pop nature of dubstep, doesn't it? I mean, if it can only "truly" be experienced in a club, it's just not pop.

Which may be just fine, of course. It makes dubstep a music that forces you to engage with a community or scene... kinda like some punk and indie* scenes...

*indie in the North American sense!!! and i really just mean small scale stuff in toronto and providence, which i know first hand...!

 

[Poet for Hire]

re: Dubstep albums... I just listened to the whole Mark One lp and I had that same response I invariably have with dubstep. First coupla minutes of the first track ---- excellent, this is great, surely I was too harsh on dubstep... But by the second and third track, you feel like you are locked in a multi-storey car park on a planet where gravity is twice as powerful. It is too HEAVY in all the wrong ways. And too clean --- like being stabbed repeatedly, but with a blunt instrument.
.

K-Punk - Have you heard Kode9's Dubstep Allstars vol.3 mix? Its certainly the most colourful, fast moving and least clinical in the series yet, with Spaceape's vocals and even a song in it. Also plenty of Digital Mystikz, Skream and Loefah in it. Ends with a Burial tune as well.
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=20659

 

[dHarry]

Has no-one mentioned Aphex Twin yet, especially SAW 85-92 and Surfing On Sine Waves, as a precursor to Burial - the same privileging of ghostly melody and in-a-lonely-place atmosphere e.g. Xtal's vocal, reverb and tape hiss (allegedly it was mastered for the album from a cassette, the only extant copy), the same instant myth created around the persona, the same tangential relation to a genre, techno in the case of early Aphex (before his dabblings with jungle and the establishment of IDM as a genre).

This latter point is instructive - it's almost as if Burial is a lone genius of a type that a certain listener requires from a scenius (Derrick May, Goldie, Aphex), to believe in even though the scene functions perfectly well without him (it's always male!)... and the sneaking suspicion that if Burial didn't exist, Blackdown or Kode 9 would have invented him (or has...?)

 

[robin]

is there a link to this burial radio mix anywhere?
i had a look at the breezeblock site but its only last weeks show that's up...
also,if anyone has any links to good 2step mixes i'd much appreciate it,the only 2step i know is paul.meme's abstract 2step mix,which i really like,(im actually listening to it right now) but id love to hear some more...

 

[dHarry]

is there a link to this burial radio mix anywhere?

art-step (!?)

http://www.barefiles.com/download.php?id=464

 

[robin]

nice one harry,looking forward to hearing this now,after reading this thread and the interview...

 

[robin]

i like the sound of that alright,i must check out the album
is the mix only meant to be 20 minutes long?

 

[jay-s]

also,if anyone has any links to good 2step mixes i'd much appreciate it,the only 2step i know is paul.meme's abstract 2step mix,which i really like,(im actually listening to it right now) but id love to hear some more...

shameless plug, i know, but you can try my own mixes from 2 years ago:

http://www.play.fm/playfm_sets.php?play_s_id=290

http://www.play.fm/playfm_sets.php?play_s_id=403

they can't be downloaded normally, but check them out, and if you want to download them let me know.

 

[gek-opel]

As regards the technicalities in Burial's sound and the possibility of its creation using a waveform audio editing package (yes boring, I know), I would say "random pitching" and the like is just as easily achieved thru pitchshifting samples by hand (a technique I myself employ using cubase as a multitrack audio recorder)--the fact you've got to physically type in the pitch shift means that if you don't have another instrument handy with which to check the pitch in relation to the backing track you will frequently have to cycle thru a number of pitches until you find one which sounds "right"... it sounds to me like that is the technique being deployed here (ie- no need to trouble oneself with midi...)

 

[robin]

shameless plug, i know, but you can try my own mixes from 2 years ago:

http://www.play.fm/playfm_sets.php?play_s_id=290

http://www.play.fm/playfm_sets.php?play_s_id=403

they can't be downloaded normally, but check them out, and if you want to download them let me know.

i was actually hoping for a shamless plug so don't worry!
only trouble is the interface on that site is appaling
i can't use mozilla cause it crashes when i try to download/stream something(no idea why)
so i have to use explorer
after getting it to stop blocking popups (no mean feat) and registering for the site,the window pops up,shows the playfm logo,and then goes to the screen with the mix on it,except the main part of the screen doesnt load,it just stays blank,while the ads around the edges load...

 

[SIZZLE]

gek opel: yeah I've backed off from my 'it's obviously not SF' stance, but I still maintain that claiming that may be a smoke screen to send us away from technical analysis. Fat lot of good it did us though

 

[gek-opel]

Yes, but as someone upthread pointed out, it doesn't really matter... the concept of the lone anonymous musician capturing the ghosts of a culture hand-whittling his beats on the most simple of tools is just too poetic to not fall for. I hope we never find out too much, myth/mystique is hard to maintain in these days of info-overload. Tho interestingly more seem to be attempting it (see also Various Productions, I think Rex The Dog as well....) probably a natural reaction to the fact that too much can be known too quickly, too much de-mystification.

 

[mms]

Has no-one mentioned Aphex Twin yet, especially SAW 85-92 and Surfing On Sine Waves, as a precursor to Burial - the same privileging of ghostly melody and in-a-lonely-place atmosphere e.g. Xtal's vocal, reverb and tape hiss (allegedly it was mastered for the album from a cassette, the only extant copy), the same instant myth created around the persona, the same tangential relation to a genre, techno in the case of early Aphex (before his dabblings with jungle and the establishment of IDM as a genre).

This latter point is instructive - it's almost as if Burial is a lone genius of a type that a certain listener requires from a scenius (Derrick May, Goldie, Aphex), to believe in even though the scene functions perfectly well without him (it's always male!)... and the sneaking suspicion that if Burial didn't exist, Blackdown or Kode 9 would have invented him (or has...?)

xtal i reckon is one of afx's most influential tracks, you can hear it everywhere still, all over techno.

To me though that track sounds like 'alone in wonder and fascination of a great new space' - it reminds me greatly of waiting for a train at paddington station, looking up and seeing the proud iron skeletal roofing, but seeing pigeons, hearing bouncing voices and caught snatches of conversation in this huge out semi out door space, being distracted by the machinery, cleaning guys and train announcements, and the wonder of people, watching londons progress and being outside it.

Burials spaces seem kind of content, but damper, london really, it reminds me more of streets, damp evening standard announcements where the ink has run, coppery car lamps reflected on moving puddles, distant car horns, warm loneliness with a hint of paranoia, how you are supposed to feel, and how you really feel inside, it's alot less innocent than xtal.

 

[Blackdown]

whenever anything with a melody comes along some electronica fan always compares it to AFX. crucially though, burial, like much of dubstep is much more a reflection of urban london.

electronica is so introspective; dubstep outrospective...

 

[mms]

whenever anything with a melody comes along some electronica fan always compares it to AFX. crucially though, burial, like much of dubstep is much more a reflection of urban london.

electronica is so introspective; dubstep outrospective...

i agree and it is a bit silly really but there is a comparison to be had here though... it would however be slack to compare him and skream but his track xtal and burials stuff have a similar feeling, also it's not melody but echo and minimal melody that are the things being compared, but again i think that track can be heard across onto basic channel, monolake and across that spectrum of european dubbed out techno..
most of his other stuff bears no resemblance whatsoever though .

 

[jay-s]

i was actually hoping for a shamless plug so don't worry!
only trouble is the interface on that site is appaling
i can't use mozilla cause it crashes when i try to download/stream something(no idea why)
so i have to use explorer
after getting it to stop blocking popups (no mean feat) and registering for the site,the window pops up,shows the playfm logo,and then goes to the screen with the mix on it,except the main part of the screen doesnt load,it just stays blank,while the ads around the edges load...

weird. normally your default player should run and both mozilla and explorer work fine.

anyway, the mixes are now available for download for a couple of days:
http://www.play.fm/temp/sets/a0000000273.mp3

http://www.play.fm/temp/sets/a0000000355.mp3

rightclick and save as

 

[elgato]

electronica is so introspective; dubstep outrospective...

To me that seems like a pretty outrageous generalisation. I dont agree at all. I think that some 'electronica' is much more intensely introspective, and some dubstep is perhaps more intensely 'outrospective' (although I think it depends where you draw the line re: what is electronica as if you allow in the various forms in which techno may come then I think you could build a strong argument that there exists electronica which is acutely outrospective). It also seems like there is some sort of implication that introspection in music is somehow less valuable than outrospection, which Im not sure Im fully behind either.

I can see that it may be irritating to hear something you dont see to be the case and which you want to set straight. I agree that burial, and a fair bit of dubstep (although none so acutely) are a reflection of urban london. But that is not to say that electronica is not reflective of its own surroundings (basic channel and a quantity of modern techno of berlin, early detroit techno of, well, detroit, for example), or that if it is not, it is necessarily any less for that. For example, ive been listening to a Claro Intelecto album recently which was recorded during a period when he was accompanied by a severe nerve disorder. When listening there is a very real sense of the emotional extremes of a man going through such an experience...the despair and the darkness, but also the hope, and the appreciation of all the rest. This to me is equally 'valid' subject matter for emotive representation in music.

I apologise if this is way off the mark and you didnt mean to imply this, I just got a sense of that from your words, and 'electronica' is something quite often derided by the 'ardcore as it were.

 

[Poet for Hire]

electronica is so introspective; dubstep outrospective...

I have to agree, that this is way off the mark and as a generalisation is wishful thinking perhaps. I think Burial and the most interesting dubstep is both. Strange, but the Blackdown tunes I've heard are perhaps the most 'electronica' related in dubstep.