New Burial album. More info?

good plan bitch.

oh yeah the vocals...

...cut em up randomly in 'recycle' spread em over your keyboard and play them manually in real time using your pitch shift wheel, record and add effects

sometimes the effect is haunting and beautiful... (shell of light)

... other times not so much. (first half of near dark)

i do think the vocals are too prominent in this album. if i was a cynical guy i'd say he read too many of his own reviews and went for what he thought people liked best about the first one.

just my initial impressions - i still need to listen to this more. somehow it seems kind of formulaic and less... "deep" than the first album to me.

good plan bitch.

^^^i bet u suck a mean dick...

...maybe shoulda got spaceape in to vocalise some shit and given his vox the treatment

I try but I just cant listen to more than 2 of his trax in a row if i'm actually listening (it's them bloody drums aaaaarrrrrrrrrggghhh) but to have it loop in the background continuously makes it like one loooooong song that i kind of like...

...gotta be sum remixes coming out pleeeease

"i do think the vocals are too prominent in this album. if i was a cynical guy i'd say he read too many of his own reviews and went for what he thought people liked best about the first one.

just my initial impressions - i still need to listen to this more. somehow it seems kind of formulaic and less... "deep" than the first album to me.

-- rockapads"

nah, id say he was just trying to copy the shit out of Groove Chronicles "Stone Cold" which incidentily you can hear on El-B's myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/ghostrecordings

i mean, this album is blatantly an abstracted version of that track right there. as it is my favorite 2-step jam, that is all good with me. i wouldnt say it is formulaic, id say that he just stuck to a more obvious song structure, and even within that he did some nice things (the false ending of "untrue", the off timing on things coming in on "raver", etc) to trick it out. i would say that this one is more "deep" than the first one, though.....

<i>nah, id say he was just trying to copy the shit out of Groove Chronicles "Stone Cold" which incidentily you can hear on El-B's myspace page:</i>

Well that ties in with my theory that Burial is EL-B anyway. EL B = Bury EL. Buck & Bury, ghost hardware, stone cold dead and buried... I mean c'mon ???

And in his last interview he said he wishes he were a ghost. The anonymously ressurected ghost of 2 step ..:)

If Burial was El-B you'd have to assume his drums and basslines would be better...

"i do think the vocals are too prominent in this album."
"somehow it seems kind of formulaic and less... "deep" than the first album"

OTM.

i dont think his drums or basslines are meant to be 'better', the rickety, weird, distant quality he gives them is intentional. otherwise it would just sound like normal or 'proper' garage.

^^^exactly...

Burial is the ghost of EL-B :)

I think its more likely he wishes he was El-B.

And even El-B's ghost would engineer better drum sounds than he does.

Its far more likely that this is some random friend of Steve and Martin's who just likes his privacy.

If its incredibly subtle marketing I'm gonna be pissed.

The 30 second samples make this sound more upbeat and more vocal-driven than his first, not so unrelentingly dark....is that true of the album? (I'm sure I could read this thread and glean that, but wtvs.)

"i dont think his drums or basslines are meant to be 'better', the rickety, weird, distant quality he gives them is intentional. otherwise it would just sound like normal or 'proper' garage."

ha ha the problem though titchy is that Burial's beats do sound like normal or 'proper' garage - just a slightly weak and generic version of same (though this may be a slight improvement over just badly programmed earlier tracks like "Southern Comfort"), and recorded from a room down the hall. El-B's Ghost releases were much more avant in the rhythm section.

I'm not really trying to criticize Burial, who i think is often excellent - it's just that his skills lie elsewhere.

I thought we established ages ago that he's JX?

youre right tim w/r/t to this new album - it sounds like hes trying to make more normal 2step but failing terribly. he needs to go back to making abstracted 2 step rather than 2 step proper. it sounds wrong in his hands. i hope this isnt the road hes going to try and go down more.

lol@recorded from a room down the hall. hes like the garage ariel pink.

"Buri" Al Yankovich

i cant listen to the first half of his album too much. bit too repetitive. its like one long track that goes on until track 6.

I'm sort of surprised people are treating this as anything other than an ambient record that happens to be influenced by 2-step.

well, the first one WAS really moving. this one though is a bit ersatz and direction-less.

Just you wait until you happen to listen to it in the right place/time/state of mind. (it suddenly clicked for me, maybe it can still do so for you)

"well, the first one WAS really moving. this one though is a bit ersatz and direction-less.

-- titchyschneiderMk2"

after listening to this new one more and more, i feel the exact same way. except about the opposite albums. the space ape track on the first one always irritated me, i would skip it basically every time i listened. and the shortness of the ambient cuts always made me want more. it now feels like he had something to say, but wasnt quite there yet. now i feel like is is really there, he found the direction and really made a much better listening ALBUM.

HATED the Space Ape track on the first album. Although the Kode 9 and Space Ape album is mostly marvellous.

The Spaceape track on Burial was my favourite by far. Would love to more Burial with an MC, just like I always preferred ukg with rappers like that MJ Cole Roots Manuva track.

.... but the Roots Manuva remix isn't even very good!

At least shore up your argument by referring to an actual bona fide garage-rap classic!

would love to hear an entire genre like the shy fx remix of pd syndicate's "ruff like we"

we'll call it "thugstep"

j/k

i like the bloc party remix a lot.

<quote>At least shore up your argument by referring to an actual bona fide garage-rap classic!</quote>

I was the biggest so solid and oxide/neutrino fan...

...nothing to do with burial, just thought I'd mention that

fuck did those fellas have some mean ass beats and vids...

"fuck did those fellas have some mean ass beats and vids..."

ang tite mr shabz ;)

admittedly, i know nothing about Burial and always sort of was like, "those crazy britishes."

but "Archangel" has been stuck in my head since i dl'ed from a blog a week or two back, and uh....i really kinda like this?

admittedly, i know nothing about Burial and always sort of was like, "those crazy britishes."

...he's the latest bit of fad music for all the jaded ravers and music crits who came though the the last 25 yrs and have now realised the british music industry ran out of ideas, realised the drugs don't work anymore and the music dosn't really stand up on its own without them

the anonymity represents the underground that doesn't exist for people to move into the mainstream light from anymore so you're better of staying wherever you are...

...it's all a bit sad really and you must understand burial in the overall evolution of the 'hardcore contuinuum' out of london and in relation to kode 9's hyperstitious beliefs otherwise you're not seeing the big picture

or you could just listen to it and think 'eh whats all the fuss about ?'...he's got some nice bits he's got some shit bits

"...it's all a bit sad really and you must understand burial in the overall evolution of the 'hardcore contuinuum' out of london and in relation to kode 9's hyperstitious beliefs otherwise you're not seeing the big picture

-- pollywog"

hmm, i dont agree at all, actually. i think it helps to understand where any music comes from and its place in other music (hardcore continuum is such a ridiculous idea, hardcore didnt come from nowhere, it came from house and techno and hiphop, which all came from disco, which came from soul and r+b and blues and tribal drumming..... etc etc etc). but sometimes, a record just touches people. and this new record seems to be one of those. it is so far beyond its genre limitations, people who could give a fuck about jungle or 2-step or dubstep can immediately feel what the guy is trying to do. you can hate on that and look stupid, or you can just appreciate the fact that the man made a hell of a record.

'hardcore continuum' was just a catch-all to describe the progression of underground dance music strictly emanating from the UK (obv having been influenced from elsewhere) since people in London started making hip-hop no?

i only really like the second, third tracks and last tracks plus most of the beatless bits inc 'In Mcdonalds' esp. the bit where the sample of the girl vocal drifts in which captures the 'vaporous anima like the smokemonster from Lost drifting through this reality alive, awake but only partially aware at any specific moment in time' perfectly.

I think more specifically "hardcore continuum" refers to the relationship between that development and a particular audience - i.e. the notion that you had a population of listeners/participants who could be loosely defined in socioecomic/ethnic/geographic terms and could be traced from 'ardkore through jungle through speed garage through 2-step to grime (dubstep and bassline possibly fall outside this in the same way that the last 8 years or so of drum & bass do).

The irony about Burial is that he superficially genuflects towards this ideal but his music lacks the rudeboy element that I think is common to all those moments. Hence the critical line from those who take the notion seriously is that Burial "mourns" the "death" of this music.

It's a take on the music I disagree with - it might have had some credence if the music was made specifically by and for Dissensus readers but it seems pretty clear to me that the appeal of this music to much of its audience (who, as pipecock says, don't necessarily know 2-step etc.) is precisely that it lacks that sort of rudeboy element (by which I mean both roughness and pop irreverence, and more besides).

I should note that what i'm saying should be construed narrowly - I'm not saying this music is bad or that it would only appeal to people who don't or wouldn't like 2-step. Rather, that its appeal is based on these points of distinction.

anyone fancy a pint?

"The irony about Burial is that he superficially genuflects towards this ideal but his music lacks the rudeboy element that I think is common to all those moments. Hence the critical line from those who take the notion seriously is that Burial "mourns" the "death" of this music.

It's a take on the music I disagree with - it might have had some credence if the music was made specifically by and for Dissensus readers but it seems pretty clear to me that the appeal of this music to much of its audience (who, as pipecock says, don't necessarily know 2-step etc.) is precisely that it lacks that sort of rudeboy element (by which I mean both roughness and pop irreverence, and more besides).

-- Tim F"

im not sure that the rudeboy element as you put it is all that spot on either, though. sure, there was always a little of that (aphrodite, dj hype, etc) but there was also a ton of stuff that really had nothing to do with that perspective (cloud 9/nookie, peshay, photek, ltj bukem, etc). for me, i love both sides of the coin in both genres, 2-step and jungle, but it is all the same thing! and burial's music is mainly a tribute to one side more than the other. look at goldie or a guy called gerald, both had something of the rudeboy to them but their music didnt really have that edge when they made the records that influenced Burial.

I know what you mean but I think you're misinterpreting me a bit - I'm not saying that all the records in these genres were fundamentally rudeboy, but what inhered in the transition from one genre to the next was the rudeboy element.

Nor am I saying that Burial's music is not influenced by all of these genres or that he's not paying tribute to people that have gone before him - rather, that whatever he's paying tribute to it's not "the hardcore continuum" as such. Anyway it's not as if this notion is self-evident to anyone who listens to all this music.

(OTOH I think that's a bit of a mischaracterisation of Goldie and A Guy Called Gerald. Remember that at the same time that Goldie was making Timeless he was also making "VIP Rider's Ghost" and "Saint Angel" and some great slamming remixes. And A Guy Called Gerald made some awesome hardsteppy, proto-techstep tracks.)

But anyway the whole point with jungle/drum & bass is that (according to "hardcore continuum" orthodoxy) it was moving towards a moment of internal rupture between people who wanted to stay true to that inherent flavour even if it meant abandoning the genre outright, and people who stayed loyal to "drum and bass" as such.

2-step never went through such a split, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a prominent producer who didn't stay true to that rudeboy flavour to some degree.

"Nor am I saying that Burial's music is not influenced by all of these genres or that he's not paying tribute to people that have gone before him - rather, that whatever he's paying tribute to it's not "the hardcore continuum" as such. Anyway it's not as if this notion is self-evident to anyone who listens to all this music."

youre right, it is not necessarily self evident, but i feel like people who were into the specific strains of those genres would be the people most easily able to feel his music, especially the first record which defnitely had less pop elements in it. i mean, when i heard his music the first time, i knew that he was listening to the same things that i had been. the spirit, more than a specific sound, was in there.

"(OTOH I think that's a bit of a mischaracterisation of Goldie and A Guy Called Gerald. Remember that at the same time that Goldie was making Timeless he was also making "VIP Rider's Ghost" and "Saint Angel" and some great slamming remixes. And A Guy Called Gerald made some awesome hardsteppy, proto-techstep tracks.)"

i mean, AGCG had a record called "28 gun badboy", goldie did plenty of harder edged material. but there was always that extra atmosphere that their music had that put it above being "just" hard/dark music. i feel like Burial rides that line too, he uses the growling "terrorist" bass, but his atmosphere is so prevalent that it doesnt feel as menacing as it could.

"But anyway the whole point with jungle/drum & bass is that (according to "hardcore continuum" orthodoxy) it was moving towards a moment of internal rupture between people who wanted to stay true to that inherent flavour even if it meant abandoning the genre outright, and people who stayed loyal to "drum and bass" as such.

2-step never went through such a split, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a prominent producer who didn't stay true to that rudeboy flavour to some degree."

Wookie? MJ Cole? K-Warren? artful dodger? i guess all of them had *something* of that flavor to them, but it was very very small and not hardly the concentration of their music. and i disagree about the "split", i remember distinctly in early 02 when the more soulful 2-step sound started disappearing almost completely and grime was keeping that beat alive (though it was called "8-bar" mostly at the time) while so many of the soulful producers went back to 4 on the floor house (plus new producers at the time like Qualifide and the like).

it was really like there was hardcore at the top, then progressively the subgenres split off more and more. jungle had its harder edge and its softer side. 2-step came out of that original jungle feeling, but it was even further from its roots and when the split in there came, it was an even more sudden break. eventually it arrived at the 2 components that originally set off hardcore: grime and dubstep representing hiphop and reggae and the reversion to 4 on the floor representing house music. and the bad part of this is that in the splitting off, that original feeling was completely lost. it is not represented anywhere in drum and bass (aside from a select track here or there), nor anywhere in dubstep. it is now represented almost solely by Burial!

just to let you know, i don't really care how much weird venom is thrown here.....

but you guys are teaching somebody who doesn't know quite a bit.

must search threads for jungle when not drunk.

all i know is that i sort of believe what pipecock is saying when it comes to music in general. that's how one gets into music, right? you hear something you're not familiar with and you like it, you investigate, sometimes quite encyclopaedically and to the neglect of other musics.

eventually it arrived at the 2 components that originally set off hardcore: grime and dubstep representing hiphop and reggae and the reversion to 4 on the floor representing house music

total madness

"total madness

-- moonship journey to baja"

but why?

Pipecock when I say "rudeboy" I (perhaps deceptively) mean something broader than just, say, "Super Sharp Shooter". I mean that whole cross-section of rude-freshness that runs (in the case of 2-step) from "Rewind" through K-Warren (particularly his delicious Underground Mix of Richie Dan's "Call It Fate" - total sufferation on the dancefloor!) and MJ Cole in both his bass-friendly and more refined incarnations (okay, maybe not "Sincere", but definitely the effervescent "Crazy Love") as much as the more obviously ruff post-jungle stuff from Zed Bias, Groove Chronicles etc.

It's hard to explain, but it's a certain energy that I think 2-step in particular embodied wholeheartedly (and for its duration... 2-step itself may have splitted off into grime, 4/4, dubstep etc. but it's not like you have a genre that calls itself "2-step" now that is liked by an entirely different type of audience to the one it had in its heyday - c.f. jungle).

It's precisely this energy that Burial intentionally lacks.

I guess it's kinda comparable to the difference between, say, dancehall (be it the more hip hop flavoured stuff or one drop revivalism) and Rhythm & Sound.

pipecock, combining genres isn't like combining chemicals. they don't combine and diverge quite as easily as that, and genres don't map onto each other quite so cleanly or neatly, except for people who're trying to make a point.

there's a bunch of minor problems: for example the assertion that grime is hiphop but not reggae (ELEPHANT IN ROOM = dancehall), the idea that hiphop is hiphop and not reggae and vice versa, the idea that dubstep is reggae vis-a-vis grime's hip-hop.

another big problem is the idea that hardcore = house + reggae + hip-hop. what about the hypnotist? what about what about urban hype? what about nebula II? cosmo + dibs? what gets ignored in the rush to make hardcore and jungle (and by extension, most all of dance music) fit into some imaginary soul -> funk-> reggae -> hiphop continuum is is as important as what is cited.

"It's hard to explain, but it's a certain energy that I think 2-step in particular embodied wholeheartedly

It's precisely this energy that Burial intentionally lacks.

I guess it's kinda comparable to the difference between, say, dancehall (be it the more hip hop flavoured stuff or one drop revivalism) and Rhythm & Sound.

-- Tim F"

i feel you on the energy tip, but im not sure that burial totally lacks it. it may be subdued compared to many other aspects, but his beats have a wicked snap to them (especially on this second album which definitely is more dancefloor oriented.... at least the kind of dancefloor i like) that should make people move. its like what happens with deep house, where at some point a 110 BPM dirty disco loop repeated ad nauseum that would be a boring listen at best and isnt even considered "house" music by some people will cause a near riot, the energy is in there but it is just "deep", its not simplistic dancefloor fodder like jungle or 2-step can often be.

i think the comparison with rhythm and sound is perfect actually, because of how deep and abstracted they are. their tunes dont seem very "dancefloor" when youre rocking them at your house, but when they were booming out over that ridiculous Funktion 1 soundsystem near the end of their set at DEMF 07, people were going completely nuts, probably even moreso than if it had been dancehall.

at this point in my life, i am convinced that the deeper ends of music will always produce a better dancefloor experience, once you can get your body locked into that groove and it makes your thoughts go away, the tiniest thing sets you off, it doesnt need to bang you over the head! Burial is just the deeper end of this strain of music which doesnt have many people currently mining that kind of territory.

Yeah I chose Rhythm & Sound so as to emphasise that it can be a positive as much as negative distinction - and that it doesn't mean the music isn't good to dance to.

I sorta disagree about deepness always being better. I am rather fashionably on a deepness tip right now, but at the same time prime (non-deep) 2-step is the music that changed my life and in some ways my physical relationship to music. I think the issue is more "okay I have a strategy for blowing dancers away, can I live up to it" - where the strategy can be deepness or it can be what i'm calling rudeboyism or it can be something else. There's no necessary heirarchy of strategies here.

"pipecock, combining genres isn't like combining chemicals. they don't combine and diverge quite as easily as that, and genres don't map onto each other quite so cleanly or neatly, except for people who're trying to make a point."

i dont think there was anything neat about it, in fact it was quite complex. but i definitely think that you can see the rise of the crossover of the musics, the maturity into the distinct sound of jungle, and then everything after that was some sort of breakdown into smaller pieces, it was no longer growing and expanding. and even when it was broken completely down into its most current forms, those forms are not exactly the same as the original music that went into jungle, but you can see which side each of the original materials has fallen on. bassline house and funky house are not the same as the acid and deep house that originally helped kick off jungle, but their DNA is very similar. the same way with dancehall and hiphop and grime.

"there's a bunch of minor problems: for example the assertion that grime is hiphop but not reggae (ELEPHANT IN ROOM = dancehall), the idea that hiphop is hiphop and not reggae and vice versa, the idea that dubstep is reggae vis-a-vis grime's hip-hop."

i think there is definitely something to be said for dubstep being the more reggae part of the influence and grime being the more hiphop, but the idea is still the same and hiphop and dancehall are so closely interrelated, especially in the time since jungle has existed. obviously kool herc was a jamaican cat whose influences were the sound system, and that was instrumental in the conception of hiphop. and hiphop in the early days was not that dissimilar to reggae soundsystems playing dubs with the deejay chatting on it. but the parallels are even greater by the early 90's when the genres were being made on the same equipment with alot of the same ideas (sampling earlier hits, beefing up the drums for the dancefloor). dancehall and hiphop have had massive crossover for years. not that they are the same thing, but they are far more closely related (today at least) to each other than house and hiphop are (though in the early days house and hiphop were not so dissimilar!).

essentially what happened is that hiphop and house music changed over the years that jungle and then 2-step were in existence, but they never went away. they were constantly in there with their influence, even if it was just on the fringes in some cases. eventually the old guard became more powerful than the eventually watered down forms and then their influence becamse even greater, leading to the splits.

"another big problem is the idea that hardcore = house + reggae + hip-hop. what about the hypnotist? what about what about urban hype? what about nebula II? cosmo + dibs? what gets ignored in the rush to make hardcore and jungle (and by extension, most all of dance music) fit into some imaginary soul -> funk-> reggae -> hiphop continuum is is as important as what is cited.

-- moonship journey to baja"

i dont think it really is imaginary. music didnt come from nowhere, and the culture of jungle was heavily taken from those cultures. reggae even was influenced by r+b that the jamaicans were picking up from US radio stations! all this black music is heavily interrelated, and jungle was just an extension of that. any of the other forms of music that might have influenced those guys (rock, progressive rock, jazz, etc) is all part of that family tree as well.

there is always a big push in the media to label genres of music as being "new" but that is basically never the case. there is always direct influence and taking of things from already existing music cultures, it is only new to people who werent paying attention and lack the ability to musically connect the dots. nothing is new, everything has been done before.

"I sorta disagree about deepness always being better. I am rather fashionably on a deepness tip right now, but at the same time prime (non-deep) 2-step is the music that changed my life and in some ways my physical relationship to music. I think the issue is more "okay I have a strategy for blowing dancers away, can I live up to it" - where the strategy can be deepness or it can be what i'm calling rudeboyism or it can be something else. There's no necessary heirarchy of strategies here.

-- Tim F"

well perhaps "better" wasnt the best word to use, but the problem with the more obvious dancefloor material is that it relies pretty heavily on novelty and that kind of thing. this is evidenced in the hyper accelerated shapeshifting that these obvious dancefloor musics go through: banging techno, mnml, glitch, techstep, etc etc. these records do not hold their dancefloor value, they are satisfying only on the most base level. a deep record can do the same thing to a dancefloor for 35+ years after it is made.

i am very interested in the idea of music being timeless. i believe that there is some jungle and 2-step that is timeless, but the overwhelming pressure for things to "move on" for those genres really killed those producers work. they could no longer be successful doing that kind of stuff. that was a huge problem for me when i was deejaying jungle and then 2-step, i always wanted to mix it up, play old shit, new shit of different styles, etc.

eventually i found what i was looking for in deep house, disco, and detroit techno. people have been dancing to that shit for over 30 years. and in many cases, THE SAME people have been dancing to it for that long, the old the new and everything inbetween.

one of the things i like about burial is that he is taking that same kind of approach to his music. it is distinctively "now" but it has history and it insists that the way that the majority have chosen to take things today is just dead wrong. his music will sound good in 30 years because it is so simple in the way that it works!

it insists that the way that the majority have chosen to take things today is just dead wrong

...and what way is that ???

" it insists that the way that the majority have chosen to take things today is just dead wrong

...and what way is that ???

-- pollywog"

listen to any other dubstep record or any drum and bass tune, see what it is that burial has that they don't.