Why post-Burial? ))

+Alexander Farennikov The argument is that you go back and listen to Burial circa 2005-6-7. http://www.discogs.com/artist/Burial So that's the South London Boroughs EP, Burial album, Ghost Hardware EP. There some fantastic pieces there that made a big impression on a lot of people. Including a bunch of producers who copied and used the same techniques more or less well. Some people are calling this post-dubstep, but I prefer to think of it as post-Burial.

I have almost all Burial tracks, and know what you're talking about. I didn't realize that he was actually the one who pioneered this style (or sound).

Ahh, now there's a challenge. What did his sound grow out of and what influenced it? I bet there's an answer but I don't know what it is.

BTW. http://www.quinnsoft.com/lastfm/lastfm_countries.php reads your last.fm library and listening and matches the artists with their country.

Very good question Julian! What influenced it? If we could only ask him....

I am sure you could trace it if you knew what he listened to. Do you think we can ask him? ))

Burial really attracts Pseud's Corner writing. I think that's a good thing because it means that his music is both interesting and impenetrable. Everyone brings their own interpretation to it. Here's a fine piece of writing by Simon Reynolds. Pg 393 of Retromania.


The other rave flashback came courtesy of a single artist, Burial. Like
The Klaxons, his music harked back to hardcore and early jungle, but
filtered the euphoria but filtered the euphoria through a misty-eyed
prism of loss. Although Burial's fidgety, clacking beats mimic the
hyper-syncopated bustle of British rave music, the fog-bank synths,
yearning slivers of vocal and shroud of sampled rainfall, and vinyl
hiss makes his music more suited to melancholy private reverie than rave-
floor action. This is hauntological dance, music for abandoned
nightclubs. True, his music is partly inspired by its urban environment,
specifically South London: the isolation and anomie of living in the
city. But Burial's own interview comments suggest that even though he
never participated in rave first-hand but experienced it vicariously
thriugh his older brother's DJ mix-tapes and stories, the post-rave
comedown is a large part of what his music addresses. The track 'Night
Bus', for instance, evokes the loneliness of catching the late night bus
back to the outer zones of London after going to a club. But it is also
a post-millenial nocturne for the loss of a collective sense of purpose:
it says, 'After the nineties, we're all on the Night Bus now'. Another
track on the debut album, 'Gutted', makes a similar point using a sample
of Forest Whitaker's voice from Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the
Samurai: 'Me and him, we're from different, ancient tribes ... now we're
both almost extinct ... sometimes ... you gotta stick with the ancient
ways ... old school ways.'

Burial's label mate Kode9 pinpointed the mood with the title of his
2006 album, 'Memories of the future'. In an interview, Burial talked
about 'the tunes I loved the most ... old jungle, rave and hardcore,
sounded hopeful'. Elsewhere he claimed, 'All those lost producers ... I
love them. but it's not a retro thing ... When I listen to an old tune
it doesn't make me think "I'm looking back, listening to another era".
Some of those tunes are sad because they sounded like the future back then
and noone noticed. They still sound future to me.' Burial resolves the
contradictions of retro-futurism by imagining that the this music still
IS the future, somehow: a bridge to tomorrow that was never finished but
just hangs in space, poised, pointing to something out of reach and
unattainable.

I'm particularly taken by the idea of futurist music that points along a path to a possible future but one that is always on a different timeline to ours. A path to a possible alternate reality that we just never walked down and never will.

I also have this sneaking suspicion that Burial was making music back in 2006 that was deliberately and consciously designed to be a seminal stepping off point for other producers. So the endless copies of "Burial-Like" music we've seen since were not just an inevitability but actually part of his art when it was produced back then.

Deep, huh?

+Julian Bond good stuff !!

Boy, that was a long time ago. And pre Truant, Kindred and Rival Dealer.