New Burial album. More info?

this explains his motivation for hiding his identity - so he can avoid the inevitable shit-storm when it's revealed how many uncleared samples he has used.

"bit of a copout dont you think ???

...so he's got crackle, hiss, a real depth of emotion to his ambient arrangements layered on a bed of shitty sounding drums and some wonky vocals

that's hardly insisting everyone else has got it wrong...

-- pollywog"

"soul" is the word i was looking for, but yeah he has all those things too......

Okay, close thread, "soul" has now been used to justify an otherwise arbitrary distinction between different production styles.

Nothing more to see here!

http://www.smakaho.com/soul-glo.gif

"Okay, close thread, "soul" has now been used to justify an otherwise arbitrary distinction between different production styles.

Nothing more to see here!

-- Tim F"

otherwise arbitrary? maybe if youre fucking deaf, which wouldnt totally surprise me. jungle and dubstep are the ultimate in technology triumphing over soul in music. everything is so heavily engineered to sound loud and bassy that there is no room for any real expression. Burial give a big fuck you to that whole idea.

Ok, you're an idiot.

Quiet and trebley = soul?

Of course there is a difference between Burial and other dubstep (or 2-step for that matter), but if you make a question-begging statement like "listen to any other dubstep record or any drum and bass tune, see what it is that burial has that they don't," and when pressed on what this magical quality is, you resort to "soul", well... that just strikes me as evasive reasoning.

Like "soul" is a placeholder for the time and effort it would take to think (or at least talk) through what might be a persuasive argument in Burial's favour here.

I think the flaw in your argument extends here:

"jungle and dubstep are the ultimate in technology triumphing over soul in music. everything is so heavily engineered to sound loud and bassy that there is no room for any real expression."

This combined with your statements about the timelessness of deepness imply that you're simply fetishising musty production-values in the same manner that you complain of minimal/dubstep/jungle fetishising high production-values (I'm not sure that the last two do that, actually, but for the sake of the argument let's provisionally accept that they do).

Funnily enough, at least people who do go on and on about the specifically engineered sound of a bassline etc. (much as I think they're usually making a big deal over nothing much and often a bit tiresome in their obsession with particular club sound systems) are honest in admitting that what they're responding to is something primarily sonic, i.e. it's a production technique, not some mystical quality of "soul" or "expression".

A more honest argument in favour of Burial (and perhaps by extension Theo Parrish or Rhythm & Sound or "deepness" generally, though I wonder at how flexibly this term extends to cover Burial) would be to talk about how his specific sonic approach (yes, quiet and trebly, but also papery, echoey, at times quite warped sounding, etc etc.) can be as effective and affecting as high production values, without recourse to transcendental evasiveness. But then I often sense a certain reluctance to engage with the actual aboutness-of-sound when it comes to talk about Burial, Theo Parrish, and all these artists praised for their "soul", as if there's some sort of cultural cringe at the perceived profanity of actually getting down to the mechanics of sonics, arrangements, engineering and so forth - as if this would reduce these geniuses to the humiliating level of being "merely" great production outfits.

soul pipecock ???

so you think burial is a black guy...

...for some reason he sounds white as snow to me

Don't be a dick, Robert.

Some whiteboys have a little soul, Todd Edwards maybe?

"Quiet and trebley = soul?

-- jim"

"soul pipecock ???

so you think burial is a black guy...

...for some reason he sounds white as snow to me

-- pollywog"

my guess is you people wouldnt know soul in music if it smacked you in the face. if you think a frequency range or dynamic level has anything to do with soul, youre probably retarded.

i actually assume burial is a white guy. but what does that matter? are rhythm and sound not soulful? Francois Kevorkian? the Talking Heads?

"Of course there is a difference between Burial and other dubstep (or 2-step for that matter), but if you make a question-begging statement like "listen to any other dubstep record or any drum and bass tune, see what it is that burial has that they don't," and when pressed on what this magical quality is, you resort to "soul", well... that just strikes me as evasive reasoning."

i just dont see how it is. i made my argument, i think it is quite obvious that there is something that Burial's music provides to people that other music in these genres isn't. let's face it, you could drench brittney spears in noise and crackle with weird beats and melacholy atmosphere and that is not gonna make people love her anymore than they already do. he has not taken the easy way out in any manner with his music, yet he is still ridiculously successful and his music crosses over to fans of many genres. if he was just generic artist X in the genre, he would receive exactly the attention that the other artists get: not much outside of a very niche crowd. but as people like goldie and even mj cole did in the past, the guy made some records that expressed things that people wanted to hear, and he took something that is not mainstream and people still love it because it transcends the genre nonsense. most times hype is hype, but every now and then the hype is right. this is one of those times!

"Like "soul" is a placeholder for the time and effort it would take to think (or at least talk) through what might be a persuasive argument in Burial's favour here."

yeah, i dont think or talk about music, ever. come on.

"I think the flaw in your argument extends here:

This combined with your statements about the timelessness of deepness imply that you're simply fetishising musty production-values in the same manner that you complain of minimal/dubstep/jungle fetishising high production-values (I'm not sure that the last two do that, actually, but for the sake of the argument let's provisionally accept that they do)."

i mean, i do love me some lo-fi type shit, i cant lie about that. but being lo-fi is nothing in and of itself. the brilliance is that if you can make something sound beautiful and captivating without regard to the sound quality, you have something very special on your hands. it is about stripping away everything except that which is most important in music: expression, emotion, soul.

"Funnily enough, at least people who do go on and on about the specifically engineered sound of a bassline etc. (much as I think they're usually making a big deal over nothing much and often a bit tiresome in their obsession with particular club sound systems) are honest in admitting that what they're responding to is something primarily sonic, i.e. it's a production technique, not some mystical quality of "soul" or "expression"."

i mean, that is fine for those people, especially if they can admit they are interested in that kind of thing. but that shit is science, its fun, its cool, its what i study in school! but it is not very good art, there is little being revealed of these artists' emotions or ideas.

"A more honest argument in favour of Burial (and perhaps by extension Theo Parrish or Rhythm & Sound or "deepness" generally, though I wonder at how flexibly this term extends to cover Burial) would be to talk about how his specific sonic approach (yes, quiet and trebly, but also papery, echoey, at times quite warped sounding, etc etc.) can be as effective and affecting as high production values, without recourse to transcendental evasiveness."

i mean, r&s are not stylistically identical to theo parrish who isnt stylistically related to burial. but they all put the same thing at the front of their music, and that is their artistic expression. its not about the production value being effective or not. there are good electronic musicians who can express themselves quite awesomely and keep the sound "clean" (UR, 4 Hero, Metro Area, Carl Craig, etc etc) and i appreciate them very much as well. of course if you took their music and played it on some acoustic instruments and drums, it would still be captivating, unlike so the genres that rely specifically on electronic tricks.

"But then I often sense a certain reluctance to engage with the actual aboutness-of-sound when it comes to talk about Burial, Theo Parrish, and all these artists praised for their "soul", as if there's some sort of cultural cringe at the perceived profanity of actually getting down to the mechanics of sonics, arrangements, engineering and so forth - as if this would reduce these geniuses to the humiliating level of being "merely" great production outfits.

-- Tim F"

but it is not about sound, thats why! these artists just go straight for the unquantifiables in their music, everything else is secondary. im sure there are people who are just into lo-fi sound, but thats a whole other area of distorted thought that may as well the same as people who are only into hi-fi sound.

the basic idea is that Burial has transcended his genre of music by stripping away the backwards thought that has driven the creativity in two genres of music that i have loved for a long time into the ground. people quit caring about music and started caring about nonsense, he took it back to the music alone and some people hate on him for that! how crazy. when making beautiful soulful music is the exception and it causes people to dismiss you, something is terribly wrong with the standards!

the basic idea is that Burial has transcended his genre of music by stripping away the backwards thought that has driven the creativity in two genres of music

...what creativity driving backwards thought has burial stripped away to transcend his genre ???

ya'll talkn some crazy shit bro...

Some whiteboys have a little soul

maybe back in the day but not so much now. I mean i'm fucked if any white boy jumps out of the pack at the mo screaming 'check me out I'm a fucking soulboy'...

...least of all burial, thats just ludicrous

Burial is white.

This thread is hilarious.

Hmm I don't think there is any point in us continuing this particular debate pipecock, as I am very anti the use of the word "soul" in discussions of music outside of the soul-the-genre. I think we'll have to accept that we have fundamentally different approaches to thinking about music and leave it at that.

Except to say that this argument:

"of course if you took their music and played it on some acoustic instruments and drums, it would still be captivating, unlike so the genres that rely specifically on electronic tricks."

... seems so consummately antithetical to my whole notion of the value of dance music, that from my perspective it verges on Geir-like levels of bizarro.

"...what creativity driving backwards thought has burial stripped away to transcend his genre ???

ya'll talkn some crazy shit bro...

-- pollywog"

the backwards thought is that there is some "standard" of production values that are needed to make a valid song in the genre. the trend in drum and bass and dubstep is to sound as nearly alike as possible to every other artist, i cant really figure that one out. how exactly is an individual supposed to be able to express themselves properly when they have to fit into a super-limited framework?

dnftt

"Hmm I don't think there is any point in us continuing this particular debate pipecock, as I am very anti the use of the word "soul" in discussions of music outside of the soul-the-genre. I think we'll have to accept that we have fundamentally different approaches to thinking about music and leave it at that."

that is of course a completely ridiculous approach that you have if nothing can have soul unless there is an r&b singer on it. is jazz not soulful? house? bob fucking dylan has more soul than most dance music produced these days. people need to quit being afraid to be different, no two people are the same, so why should their artistic expression sound indistinguishible? it is completely crazy.

"Except to say that this argument:

"of course if you took their music and played it on some acoustic instruments and drums, it would still be captivating, unlike so the genres that rely specifically on electronic tricks."

... seems so consummately antithetical to my whole notion of the value of dance music, that from my perspective it verges on Geir-like levels of bizarro.

-- Tim F"

dance music is the oldest shit on the planet. house and techno music are the modern examples of the most basic percussive music that dates back as long as the idea of music has existed. it is not significanly different in intent or execution from tribal drumming. dance has existed a long long time, and it doesnt need synthesizers, ableton live, or max/msp. all you need is a funky beat and maybe a little melody. it is very simple. if youre relying on modern production gimmicks to excite people, that shit is novelty and not much else. drum and bass and dubstep were both music that was rhythmically interesting. they sacrificed that quality to become production trick music, which is why they are niche music that production geek people are interested in. they have become failures of what dance music is all about.

Geir-like levels of bizarro.

-- Tim F

pipecock = the nu-dance geir

dance music is the oldest shit on the planet. house and techno music are the modern examples of the most basic percussive music that dates back as long as the idea of music has existed. it is not significanly different in intent or execution from tribal drumming.

-- pipecock

this is just plain wrong! the earliest forms of music are vocal, the earliest instruments weren't drums but flutes! the idea that bones could be struck together to make a sound seems to have arisen nearly a thousand years AFTER the idea of blowing through them to make tones.

the earliest african music is chanted vocal harmony music, which proves my contentious that polyphonic progressive trance music is actually the most african dance music.

i mean, proves my contention

theo parrish = a mere imitator of europeam avant-garde masters like boulez and stockhausen

dance has existed a long long time, and it doesnt need synthesizers, ableton live, or max/msp. all you need is a funky beat and maybe a little melody

and i mean, this is ridiculous. do you fantasize about ancient people dancing to 4/4 drum rhythms? because that's a fantasy. most old dance styles are based on dancing to a rhythm but not necessarily to rhythm instruments. see the entire history of european dance, asian dance, south american dance, even most african dance.

sorry, pipecock, you've bought into a fundamentally racist story of dance music where people dancing to backbeat-heavy 60s soul is juxtaposed w/ the stereotyped image of zulus bouncing to tribal drumming.

"all you need is a funky beat and maybe a little melody" - you know, which is why pygmys, uh, flutes and reeds, and the north africans invented the, uh, oud, and in central africa they invented mbira and highlife, and the maasai invented polyphonic choral chants to go w/ their dances, etc etc

funny, you dont need ANY instruments to play percussion, you just need some hands to clap together or a foot to stomp on the ground. yeah, the voice was used along with it, but these dont require any technology outside of the human body that can be found archaeologically! these are the most basic components of music, and it is not dependent on technology in any way. hence the idea of needing just a rhythm and a melody.

hand-clappin' foot-stompin' = not really part of many traditional musics, you know

and if you can make one tone with your voice, you can play that tone rhythmically before the idea of more than one tone (or melody/harmony) come into it. shit, you can grunt in rhythm.

"hand-clappin' foot-stompin' = not really part of many traditional musics"

according to what?

according, to, you know, name me a traditional music that you can listen to a field recording of and we'll talk about it.

i'm sorry, though, my brief rant completely avoids engaging w/ the main intellectual thrust of your argument, which is that Burial has transcended his genre of music by stripping away the backwards thought that has driven the creativity in two genres of music that i have loved for a long time into the ground

"...what creativity driving backwards thought has burial stripped away to transcend his genre ???

ya'll talkn some crazy shit bro...

-- pollywog"

the backwards thought is that there is some "standard" of production values that are needed to make a valid song in the genre. the trend in drum and bass and dubstep is to sound as nearly alike as possible to every other artist, i cant really figure that one out. how exactly is an individual supposed to be able to express themselves properly when they have to fit into a super-limited framework?

what are some of these "standard" production values needed to make valid dubstep ???

who says any individual has to fit within a super-limited framework to be able to express themselves within the genre ??? the dubstep though police over at their elitist forum ???

who you been talking to ??? maybe just the wobbleclones yeah ???

...oh yeah sure blackdown says toasty, boxcutter et al aren't dubstep they're breakstep but he's an idiot pushing his own agenda of whatever that lo weight shit is he produces is cos those guys piss all over his sound

dude should just give up and just write about the stuff, champion it instead of wanting to have his cake and eat it too...

sets a bad example to all the fanboys at dubstepforum thinking if he can make shit music and call it dubstep it gives them free license to clone the innovators as well...

...still, he's only following in kode 9's footsteps. I mean his album was shit, his compositions and production are sub par and no amount of bass theory and post jungle apocalypta rants can make up for crap tunes

...as for burial, he'd have the easiest sound to clone but why would you want to ??? without the anonymous gimmick generating interest there really isn't much there musically challenging either

he's good and i like some of his tunes but he's not all that...

...now reso on the other hand OMG !!!

This thread is hilarious.

-- Mister Craig, Saturday, 17 November 2007 12:29 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Link

^^^heh...it has it's moments

...and before everyone jumps on blackdown and kode9's dick and down my throat just go listen to their tunes with a critical ear and forget about their status in the scene

hell, just saying that in my last post woulda got be banned and death threatened all over again on dubstepforum...

...deleting sample sources to protect the anonymous

FUNNNNNYYYYY CARRRRNTS...

I first heard Untrue in a record store, and I thought it was an early DJ Spooky album with vocal things, which isn't really what I wanted to hear. :(

When I said as much in some electronic discussion forum based in the PacNW (ok, granted, I did called Untrue the most boring album of 2007 there), I got this as a personal email:

"Sir, in a few lines you have proven to be a vapid fuck. I vow to spit on you lest I cross your pussy path."

I do like how Burial's been able to give to electronic/atomspheric discussions the same kind of fan level throwdowns common in metal and hip-hop. If only someone could be this passionate defending, I dunno, Sigur Ros or other bands!

Apologies for my path of pussy.

^^^hahaha ,listen up son...

...it's not enough to like burial, you gotta love him and defend him, suffer for him and be prepared to die for him cos thats what his music suggests he would do for you

he is the ghost of christmas past, the deus ex machina, the kwisatz haderach of the hardcore continuum and if you don't know, then you're some neanderthal retard who understands nothing about soulful electronica and londons pre eminence in the world thereof :)

"Sir, in a few lines you have proven to be a vapid fuck. I vow to spit on you lest I cross your pussy path."

Haha oh come on if this was a hip-hop/metal forum this wouldn't be sent as a personal email.

I'm beginning to suspect that I might want to listen to this record before buying it as this thread rambles on.

...up the dosage !!!

I noticed a sample from Elliot Goldenthal's Alien 3 score on the first track of this CD

post very much in character, yada yada, etc.

Retards be retarding.

Mr V brings the pain as usual.

gah... internet scenesters are such a turn off.

this album is growing on me, but i still think playing voice samples on a midi keyboard is kind of silly sounding. guy has some really nice drones, though - would love to hear him explore that more. the clippety-cloppety drum sounds wear on me a little, too. it kind of hurts to listen to certain songs on headphones with those woodblock sounds hammering away.

pipecock you’re sounding as ridiculous as Omar S.

i still think playing voice samples on a midi keyboard is kind of silly sounding

Yeah it probably is. Nothing to do with Burial though.

I love Untrue. In fact, the dubstep genre made me go back and try to get acquainted with a line of genres that led up to it, e.g., jungle, drum-and-bass, 2-step, garage, and so forth.

As I understand it, most of those genres developed in the 90s. This makes me think that I completely missed the most interesting music of that decade (I was mostly focused on -- and uninspired by -- rock from the era)(n.1) The idea of pirate radio stations in London playing these new genres sounds a whole lot more exciting than 90s rock radio.

I wish I knew more about the differences between these genres. It seems clear that each new genre evolved from the next, but I don't have a good feel for where it all began (Chicago House maybe?) and how each new genre added or subtracted sounds/elements from their predecessors. Any info on this from you knowledgeable folks is, as always, appreciated.

__________________________
(n.1) Except for Nirvana, who were all-time great.

Daniel, probably the easiest thing is to just buy Simon Reynolds' Generation Ecstasy (or Energy Flash if you're in Europe). It tells this whole story with a special focus on the musics played on London pirate radio, ending with speed garage. Then you can read his (pretty amazing) 2-step article from 1999 on his website.

Back to the argument:

I do disagree with Pollywog, I thought the Kode 9/Spaceape album was great, better in fact than Burial. The best parts though were the ones that didn't sound much like dubstep orthodoxy - Kode 9 is actually a better hip hop producer than dubstep producer I think.

To be clear, Pipecock I'm not denying that all these musics that you like have "soul", rather I'm suspicious of this term as a valuable tool in discussing music. It's a black hole term: all that people can say is "i think this music has soul and that music doesn't" or "I think this music is more soulful than that music," and there's literally nothing you can say to add to that. It shuts down discussion, and in the process encourages lazy thinking (and generally unexamined canonical thinking to boot) where we don't know why one thing is better than another thing, IT JUST IS OKAY. Playing the soul-card is actually worse than playing the authenticity-card in this regard.

Generally, people who use this term a lot haven't thought much about why they use it, or what they're actually responding to when it pops into their head. True to form, you've had several opportunities to clarify what it is in Burial's music that makes you drag out the s-word beyond other evasive phrases like "expression", "transcends", escaping all the backwards thoughts etc... But of course if you wanted to do this you wouldn't have tried to shift the discussion towards soul in the first place.

"dance music is the oldest shit on the planet. house and techno music are the modern examples of the most basic percussive music that dates back as long as the idea of music has existed. it is not significanly different in intent or execution from tribal drumming. dance has existed a long long time, and it doesnt need synthesizers, ableton live, or max/msp. all you need is a funky beat and maybe a little melody. it is very simple. if youre relying on modern production gimmicks to excite people, that shit is novelty and not much else. drum and bass and dubstep were both music that was rhythmically interesting. they sacrificed that quality to become production trick music, which is why they are niche music that production geek people are interested in. they have become failures of what dance music is all about."

Even if we accept this, doesn't that effectively efface any difference between disco, house, techno etc. etc? Doesn't it render interesting sonic developments - like the specific sound of Rhythm & Sound releases - empty and meaningless?

Dance music, at least since the rise of electronic instrumentation, is at least as much about the sound-of-sounds as is it about melody, rhythm etc. It's not a binary choice between timeless compositions that can be played on any instrument on the one hand and sonic gimmicks or gear fetishism on the other. The two are always interwoven in various proportions in any dance music you look at. Sure, "I Feel Love" might be a great song, great performance from Donna etc., but it's also about that marvellous, totally distinctive synth arpeggio shimmer that Moroder extracts from his machines. Drum and bass was always already a "production trick music", from the very beginning producers were fascinated with the effect of particular techniques like pitchshifting, or with creating an entirely new sounding bassline (think of all the variations on basslines jungle produced just between 1993 and 1995).

The regression in jungle from the mid to the late nineties that you're referring to isn't primarily the tale of a shift from timeless expression to gimmicky production tricks. The rise in drum & bass's excessive fixations (eg. with creating an ever more subtle variation on an acid bassline) was an effect of a narrowing of the genre's horizons of possibility - which itself was partly due to a rejection of jungle's early days, which was seen as too gimmicky. By committing themselves to a more purist vision of what drum & bass was supposed to be, producers had no choice but to become more fixated on the minute details of production.

But that doesn't mean that purism is always bad and should be rejected in favour of "expression" - which sounds like an endorsement of things like Goldie collaborating with Noel Gallagher. It was precisely because early jungle narrowed its horizons of sonic possibility from the preceding hardcore techno that it was able to intensify certain aspects like the rhythms, the basslines. Ultimately the balance got shifted too far in that direction, but the move towards a certain purism and sonic fetishism was initially a productive component in jungle's development.

And let's not even start with 2-step, which for its entire lifespan was all about the brilliant exploitation of one new gimmick after another.

... And I say that last bit as someone who's generally not into purism in dance music. But my preference for more mutational sounds (which tend to be gimmicky in a different way - a la 2-step) doesn't prevent me from recognizing the potential validity of a purist approach.

It seems clear that each new genre evolved from the next...

...nah it was more like cross pollenation and contemporaneous evolution than a straight linear progression from one genre to the other

in all those genres there were artists who defied categorisation and crossed more than a few strictly defined boundaries...

...where'd it all begin ??? probably in jamaica, with soundsystem culture, versioning and dubbing out tunes which then drifted to the US and the UK by emigrants

and please don't capitalise my name TIM F, i don't like it...