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From South London dwellings Burial is making a fresh score to the city, the perfect soundtrack to accompany late night trips under thunder flicked skies. Twisting the blueprint of the old school Hardcore scene the tempo is slowed as steppy beats snap with sublime crispness while a rumble of bass is never far away. Twitching glitches similar to those programmed by Aphex Twin or Daisuke Tanabe compliment the rib-rattling low frequencies. Untrue lurks in the mysterious place at the end of DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… when the words from the giant in Twin Peaks linger against an epic hum “It is happening again…”

Enhancing the sullen beauty further is the palette of vocal samples, which flux between whines or groans. Unlike the jumbled labels on my vinyl copy, Untrue is crafted excellently, sewing sombre dance anthems with eerie interludes. ‘Archangel’, ‘Near Dark’, ‘Untrue’ and the wonderfully titled ‘Raver’ have left me dancing like a loon, while of the other atmospheric delights ‘Etched Headplate’ stands out with it’s vast roaming drone.

A rave where glowsticks are replaced with reflective thought and hoodie-clad choirboys thrust their lighters aloft

As well as a spread of excellent songs there are umpteen individual moments I really savour—the way “love you” is pronounced with exasperated stress in ‘Ghost Hardware’; the clap-cum-click beat in ‘Etched Headware’; the timing of the intermittent pops in ‘Untrue’. Burial also counterpoints his superb sounds prodigiously, one choice moment when frequencies harmoniously contrast is the bassline juxtaposed with in-a-field-in-‘89 chords in ‘Raver’, And what a rave! Where glowsticks are replaced with reflective thought and hoodie-clad choirboys thrust their lighters aloft.

Whether it is the absence of a sequencer or purely Burial’s creative nouse Untrue has a unique freshness that is brilliantly gripping, in the way Goldie’s Timeless or Calibre’s Musique Concrete continue to be. An article and interview from last month in FACT (link below) casts light on this innovative music, with Burial revealing “The sound that I’m focused on is more, you know, when you come out of a club and there’s that echo in your head of the music you just heard…”. A strong contender for album of the year Burial’s second album release on Hyperdub needs to be checked by anyone excited by electronic music.

Links:
Burial
Daisuke Tanabe’s music
Aphex Twin Community
Goldie’s Timeless
Hyperdub
Hyperdub blog, Kode-9 interviews Burial
Burial interview in FACT