Burial interview @ Blackdown/Burial album

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gek-opel

entered apprentice
FINALLY got this in the post today...
obviously heard most of the tracks...

But "Pirates"-

its a monster of a track, empty, yet teeming with diseased urban life, seething with different layered elements... its structure I think works the best out of all the tracks on the album, as it develops quite considerably across its 6 minute length.... gradually building into grimey ravey stabs and delayed guitars... like a 2step "I Remember Nothing".... emptiness filled with glistening, disquieting details...

And all the sounds that are like discarded shell casings hitting the floor at the bottom of a reverb pit are incredible too....

And "Forgive" rising like some kind of rave "Jerusalem", or a forgotten national anthem for a country long since destroyed thru war or sunk beneath the waves, still transmitting, across ever growing layers of static and interference... gorgeously evocative.
 
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dHarry

Well-known member
bleep said:
Liking this but its weird hearing the Horsepower/El-B style beats nowadays.
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Yes, loved what I've heard it too, but as you imply here it's more a 2step-hauntology thing than dubstep really, a kind of requiem for the past or the disorienting uncanniness of the past's lost future...

...as *Blackdown's fantastic Bristol mix also gestured at, by mixing it in over Kode 9/Spaceape's fading out Ghost Town: "Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?/We danced and sang/And the music played inna de boomtown". BEautiful idea nicely executed in the mix...

So - is Burial's music dubstep?



*But he mightn't appreciate me pointing this out, as I'm apparently "some electronica fan" erroneously comparing Burial to Aphex! (I stand by the comparison, not because Aphex is the only melodic electronica I've ever heard, so I compare it to anything from Skream to whatever, but because that hissy distorted evocative Xtal sound reverberates through Pole/Boards Of Canada/Basic Channel/Vlad Delay/Burial, whether an actual influence or not)
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Its not not dubstep, but then again not being synthy halfstep it falls outside the current standard of dancefloor dubstep I think... but then again it depends on whether dubstep is a closed aesthetic, and I would like to think that it could contain half step, swung 2 step and even 4x4, and that it will swing around between these beat structures any time the energy levels in a given style fall off a bit... however I think half step has become quite an orthodoxy especially given that the popularisation of dubstep (ie- in the last 5 months) has come at a time when the big producers are all repping the half-step vibe quite heavily.... so Burial is either a ghost from the past or a ghost from the future, depending on what other producers decide...
 
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shudder

Well-known member
gek-opel said:
Its not not dubstep, but then again not being synthy halfstep it falls outside the current standard of dancefloor dubstep I think... but then again it depends on whether dubstep is a closed aesthetic, and I would like to think that it could contain half step, swung 2 step and even 4x4, and that it will swing around between these beat structures any time the energy levels in a given style fall off a bit... however I think half step has become quite an orthodoxy especially given that the popularisation of dubstep (ie- in the last 5 months) has come at a time when the big producers are all repping the half-step vibe quite heavily.... so Burial is either a ghost from the past or a ghost from the future, depending on what other producers decide...
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re: halfstep orthodoxy, see any number of posts in the dubstep thread... of course, there are some clearly dubstep tracks which are non-halfsteppin'.. antiwar comes to mind.

As for whether Burial is dubstep, surely I'm the last person in the world to say, but it seems more like an offshoot or something. I mean, although it might sound good in clubs, it is not quite club music like 'true' dubstep is, no?.. if being a club music is important for something to be dubstep, then I might count Burial out. Of course, if dubstep is just a prototype/cluster concept, then we can just say Burial's an outlier or atypical example.. In the end, I'm not sure how interesting hte question is....
 
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spotrusha

Well-known member
questioning wether burial is dubstep or not is over-trivializing a magnificent album that evokes emotions and vibes other dubstep artists have merely touched on so far.
 
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Tweak Head

Well-known member
gek-opel said:
And "Forgive" rising like some kind of rave "Jerusalem", or a forgotten national anthem for a country long since destroyed thru war or sunk beneath the waves, still transmitting, across ever growing layers of static and interference... gorgeously evocative.
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Spot on!

I just got this album too. Fantastic.

The funny thing about it is what it does to whatever you might listen to after it ... hard to explain but it kind of alters your perception slightly by bringing you into its world. A sign of quality.
 
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evergreen

Well-known member
Tweak Head said:
it kind of alters your perception slightly by bringing you into its world. A sign of quality.
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absolutely. the sensibility is just so instantly distinct and all-encompassing. it's actually the first record that's ever inspired me in a visual art context. the distinctness of its sound seems to bleed into other senses too; visual and tactile (of course) ... for me anyhow.
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
does anyone know if and when the burial album is slated for u.s.a. release?

and what's the format, cd or lp?

but yeah, i've heard soundclips of burial on-line, and am intrigued, to say the least

and i generally agree with the position staked out by k-punk regarding need for "feminine" elements in the dubstep sound, the importance of the "sweetness of the song" in dub productions, etc

(or maybe i can get Other Music or some such store to order it for me, i.e., i'm so slack i don't even have a credit card -- so no boomkat option for me)
 
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evergreen

Well-known member
dominic said:
does anyone know if and when the burial album is slated for u.s.a. release?

and what's the format, cd or lp?
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Kode9 recently implied it'd be in Forced Exposure, at least. the only vinyl (besides the previous EP), as far as i know, will supposedly contain (i think) 3 album tracks and a remix.
 
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Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
It does strike me that the record virtually demands a critical/aesthetic perspective/reaction which is uniquely British, and 2006 British at that (even though the tracks were recorded over a five-year period).

It's a remarkable and frequently astonishing record - the negative image of SAW II, Horsepower Productions in winter, and yet also what I always imagined grime and/or dubstep should sound like - empty, vast and deeply emotional.

This is definitely going to get the CoM treatment. I can't think of another record which sums up this country at this moment in time so comprehensively and emotionally.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Hmm. It certainly states that on the back of the CD, however they sound pretty cohesive to me, and given what Burial said about his/her/their back story (ie- they sent some tracks a while ago to Kode9 cos Burial liked the hyperdub site... but the track was really poorly produced... then waited a long while, sent some more which had the crackle thing in full effect) this seems like it doesn't quite fit...

Of course, electronic producers constantly re-visit and tinker with stuff on the hard disk, so its quite possible that tracks have had numerous incarnations (see the 2step garage pop mix of "U Hurt Me") before reaching the final stage.

Something you know here then Blackdown?
 
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Keith P

draw for the drumstick
I've fallen in love with Burial's music. Living in a place like Dallas I can feel the music take me away from the 100 degree weather and cultureless/historically irrelevant surroundings. It envelopes me in a sort of shell. I'm sucked into a world of melancholy, remembrance, and lost dreams. It's the most beautifull music I've heard in ages I can tell you that.
 
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