Anyway: enough bitching about MAH...
Woebot has more to say...
http://www.woebot.com/2007/11/net_radio_rant.html
i met her once when she came down to subloaded, and seemed very nice, but tbh i never listen to her show cos she just does my head in.
Anyway: enough bitching about MAH...
haven't actually heard the album yet (struck off the hyperdub mailing list I guess :-( but that's okay cos now i can buy a nice vinyl edition instead of a poxy cd-r!).
or are these samples (and if so from where)?
do you really want to know?
if so, why?
"I can't get a singer or some session musician to come in and play or sing some dry song, so I've got to get people singing acapellas or just mates singing in their phones and re-cut up what they're saying. Sometimes I run out of a vocal and I have to re-cut up each word and make them sing a whole new verse, and you cant tell what they're saying. But I feel I can make them say certain lyrics."Is he using vocalists or are these samples (and if so from where)?
Just listened to the whole album for the first time. Deserves to be massive.
To be honest I suspect "Archangel" is the best song I've heard this year. I wasn't too impressed when I first heard it, but its just a brilliant piece of pop music, almost perfect... especially the "If I trust you..." middle 8 and the glistening reverbed ravey falsetto vocal diva wail that comes in a few times near the end... its structured in a very conventionally pop-like manner too (verse chorus, middle 8) Unlike anything on the first Burial album I'm obsessively replaying it, and its difficult to pinpoint exactly why... its just genuinely emotionally resonant in a way that exceeds the glumness of a lot of the other Burial stuff, its not mournful its really alive with feeling-- and the way the vocals are mixed at times high and clear in the mix without drowning them in reverb really makes it stand out compared to the rest of the album.
The "got to be alone"/"tell me I belong" lyrics lying just at the edge of ambiguity sonically (ie he's chopped the same sung word to get both "alone" and "belong") is a pretty amazing conceit, nailing in sonic-linguistic terms the razor edge the song's emotionalism rests upon- between desire and fear... the coke-neurosis of 2step transmuted into a genuinely "adult" hardcore...
To be honest I suspect "Archangel" is the best song I've heard this year. I wasn't too impressed when I first heard it, but its just a brilliant piece of pop music, almost perfect... especially the "If I trust you..." middle 8 and the glistening reverbed ravey falsetto vocal diva wail that comes in a few times near the end... its structured in a very conventionally pop-like manner too (verse chorus, middle 8) Unlike anything on the first Burial album I'm obsessively replaying it, and its difficult to pinpoint exactly why... its just genuinely emotionally resonant in a way that exceeds the glumness of a lot of the other Burial stuff, its not mournful its really alive with feeling-- and the way the vocals are mixed at times high and clear in the mix without drowning them in reverb really makes it stand out compared to the rest of the album.
The "got to be alone"/"tell me I belong" lyrics lying just at the edge of ambiguity sonically (ie he's chopped the same sung word to get both "alone" and "belong") is a pretty amazing conceit, nailing in sonic-linguistic terms the razor edge the song's emotionalism rests upon- between desire and fear... the coke-neurosis of 2step transmuted into a genuinely "adult" hardcore...
It might be verging on Sigur Rosian mawk but I do think 'In McDonalds' could still slay if you were in the wrong mood.(save for the ambient tracks which i could really do without)
It is easily my favorite song this year, for all these reasons. Really captures love as excess--of fear, of desire...
post-human r&b for the pre-heartbroken
Its definitely my favourite too!
My problem is that it's so much better than the rest of the album, it ends up dominating. I'm getting more into Raver, Homeless and Untrue, but Archangel comes on like a better-realised version of all of them. So i just go back to Archangel...
Edit: Good review, this:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/reviews/story/0,,2206743,00.html
Album of the month, no less