Burial

There are some in this month's issue of the Wire.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/347/

There's another picture in the magazine, he's all shadowy and you can make out that he's wearing a beanie and has long curly hair (somewhat unsurprisingly).

"I've only listened to it twice in full, but I think the album as a whole doesn't quite live up to its best tracks - i wish the whole thing had abandoned virtual-reality-divas moaning in anguish all over it, but it's only a couple of times and very fleeting!

-- Tim Finney (Tim Finney)"

so i'm guessing you loved the new one? i cant remember if you were posting in that thread or not.

New Burial album. More info?

so yes, is he the same as "Tim F"? that's what i was confused about. and since "Tim F" seemed to not like the new one, yet it is almost exactly what "Tim Finney" said he wanted the first Burial album to be, it isnt immediately obvious. one thing i dont like about ILM is that there is no real user profile, people can change their names and whatnot too easily. very annoying.

Thanks!

one thing i dont like about ILM is that there is no real user profile, people can change their names and whatnot too easily. very annoying.

You can't change your name.

Go ahead and try.

Without starting a new account.

Yeah, but you used to be able to and people did all the time (although Tim's names are pretty easy to decode.) I do find it hard to keep track of who someone is now in nu-ILX world.

I was trying to be all superpedantic like pipecock with his "Tim Finney used to say he would like something like the new Burial album but he doesn't like the new Burial album! OMG!!!11!1!" but I suppose it didn't translate.

Notice myself saying that this was utter shit upthread and I ended up buying it and thinking it was one of the best albums of last year. Things change.

(xpost)Haha well I won't dispute that pipecock is a moron whatever his user name is.

The Burial remix of Thom Yorke's "And It Rained All Night" is lazier than most Burial things I've heard. I'll probably end up praising it in a few days, knowing how I warm to things, but it really seems more like existing beats grafted under a vocal. Not nearly as good as the Bloc Party mix.

no it's definitely rubbish. every burial staple sound thrown underneath yorke's vocal. horrible.

and what an awkward beat, even for him

I like the new Burial album quite a lot. If you have a look at the other Burial thread I actually don't really talk about the album quality so much as the dodgy rhetoric people feel compelled to use when discussing him.

Burial seems to be one of those artists for whom one is not allowed to express even a vaguely equivocal position. I gave the first Burial album an 8.1 or something like that for Pitchfork and got more hatemail than for any other review complaining that I was too stupid to recognise a good record when I heard it.

Having said all this Pipecock is correct that in theory I should absolutely adore the second album given he effectively (if unwittingly) followed the advice I gave in my review. Instead I only like it quite a lot, about as much as the first album. I've wondered about this myself.

I suspect that the familiarity with his approach has meant that it's been less precious to me than it would have been had it been released as his first album. My gut reaction is that nothing on Untrue is as good as "You Hurt Me", which provides its blueprint, but it might be more correct to say that after "You Hurt Me" it's harder to be surprised. If anything I've not even given the album the chance to grow on me properly - I've just not been compelled to pull it out that much.

I think both albums have the same flaw actually which is that they have four or so amazing tracks and a bunch of pretty forgettable ones.

I disagree with Tim though. I think the best tracks on Untrue ("Etched Headplate", "Archangel", "Raver") are better than anything on the first record.

Yeah, I think Untrue is a major step up, in almost every way, for Burial. Still, my favorite of his songs is Unite, from the Soul Jazz comp Box of Dub, Vol. I.

U Hurt Me is v. good, tho.

Tim's point about the rhetoric around Burial ties in with my belief that Burial is the kind of goth it's 'okay' to like. "It's dark and spooky and I don't have to admit to liking somebody in bondage gear and ambisexual makeup!"

controversial!

"Tim's point about the rhetoric around Burial ties in with my belief that Burial is the kind of goth it's 'okay' to like. "It's dark and spooky and I don't have to admit to liking somebody in bondage gear and ambisexual makeup!""

Uh what?

it's funny to hear some of my friends talk about this record, like one dj dude for whom it's a totally out-of-nowhere sound. like he has no reference points for it at all.

archangel is the archetypal burial song. everything else is just a clone or a prototype for it...

...i love the way it doesn't sound like anything else out there but his own works so when you campare the rest of the album or other tunes of his to it, they're found wanting

As I said, i think that it's likely that my sense that nothing on the new album is better than "You Hurt Me" is actually reflective of something else, like a drop in interest in Burial generally, rather than the actual quality per se.

Ned I know what you mean but it's no more true for Burial than it was for DJ Shadow - and I think there's a great deal that the two have in common.

"I like the new Burial album quite a lot. If you have a look at the other Burial thread I actually don't really talk about the album quality so much as the dodgy rhetoric people feel compelled to use when discussing him."

which is another reason why i was kinda confused, because even though we discussed many things about it, i dont remember you specifically saying whether you liked it or not!

"Having said all this Pipecock is correct that in theory I should absolutely adore the second album given he effectively (if unwittingly) followed the advice I gave in my review. Instead I only like it quite a lot, about as much as the first album. I've wondered about this myself."

when i read that older post, i couldnt even believe it. you totally nailed his direction over a year before the album came out. i had to do a double take on the date to make sure i wasn't imagining things!

"I suspect that the familiarity with his approach has meant that it's been less precious to me than it would have been had it been released as his first album. My gut reaction is that nothing on Untrue is as good as "You Hurt Me", which provides its blueprint, but it might be more correct to say that after "You Hurt Me" it's harder to be surprised. If anything I've not even given the album the chance to grow on me properly - I've just not been compelled to pull it out that much.

-- Tim F"

for me nothing was ever really "surprising" about his music, but that is also not one of the things i look for in any music. but for me "untrue" album definitely seems like an expansion and a contraction at the same time: he expanded on the ideas in the first album, though mainly in the ideas present in just a few of the tracks. i think it works better because of this (i am one of the people who thinks the space ape jam was the weakest on the first one, simply because it was too "different" and kind of lost the flow of the album) and the tracks that he came up with for the new one are definitely superior to the first album. if anything, i am now more doubtful of the first album simply because of how much more i like the new one!

and I think there's a great deal that the two have in common

I know Mackro was thinking more DJ Spooky but I'll buy both as comparison points, and I think we're seeing rhetorical redux bigtime in the vein of the critical response around both ten years back in Burial's case.

So now DJ Spooky was the goth it was s'okay to like?!?! Huh.

The more you act surprised the funnier it gets, trust me.

If funny = makes no sense, I guess. The Shadow comp seems spot on though.

Although I guess there is/was racial baggage with Shadow than there is/was with Burial.

ahem, "more".

"Although I guess there is/was racial baggage with Shadow than there is/was with Burial.

-- Alex in SF"

i think comparing burial to shadow is pretty close in terms of mood and atmosphere, at least as close any i can think of. not sure why there should be racial baggage with shadow though, he did shit with Paris and his crew included Blackalicious amongst many others, he was no isolated white guy. do you mean in getting crazy hype just because he was a white guy? even still, im not sure that was the exact reason, how many people really knew he was a white guy just from hearing his music? i wouldn't have guessed it and he wasnt even pictured on Endtroducing.....

Just breath, pipecock. There is always racial baggage when white american guy's make hip-hop and I doubt you can find too many pieces from 95-6 on Shadow that didn't mention his race or the fact that his music was out of place in the present world of hip hop.

Anyway I wasn't thinking so much sonically in terms of the Shadow-Burial connection (although there are some similarities, yeah) more just two guys obsessed with a particular strand of a genre that was largely out of vogue at the point where they were making music (Steinski-style cut-n-mix instrumentals for Shadow, El-B-style 2-step) and who achieved as much if not more success from fans who normally wouldn't care about the music scene they were ostensibly and rather distantly a part of (in Burial's case, seemingly by choice, in Shadow's . . . well.)

The big difference being that half if not more of the 2-step producers were white anyway.

is the thom yorke remix any good? (available from boomkat, nicely)

So is Burial definitely white?

Everything I've read indicates it's really lazy.

Yes. Definitely. Positively.

I have a photo of Burial and his girlfriend - I've even come up with the perfect lolcat caption with which to leak it to the internet. Unfortunately he doesn't have long curly hair so I think I've been played.

the thom yorke remix is easily burial's worst remix/track yet. the excellent modeselektor and various remixes more than make up for the weak burial effort.

to be honest i havent felt his remixes at all and im a huge fan of his original productions.

are the soul jazz compilations (featuring burial) any good?

They're okay. The Burial track on the first one is quite good and there are a few other good tracks on each one. A lot of it tends more towards digi-dub than dubstep (which can be good depending on your POV), but either way is sadly rather boring.

suugestions wanted: if you like burial you might also like ...

...walking through London late at night in the rain?

Adele

see, i was expecting the first reply to be "enya".