If one maintains one's patriotism, living one's life as closely to the teachings of Aaron Pierce as possible, one doesn't pay much attention to the music scene in Europe (specifically England) excepting whatever information the 'fork, the 'glow, and the 'pedia sneaks it's way across the bandwidth border. This isn't a bad, xenophobic thing to do--after all, the last 15 years of music in Europe (specifically Great Britain) is so schizophrenic and herky-jerky that it would give anyone (specifically Glenn Morshower) a serious head injury, and Glenn can take a punch. Even a rudimentary off the cuff time line (like the one coming) is educational.
It's something like this: trip-hop to pop to alterna-pop to Robbie Williams back to electronica then drum n' bass to bad French rap back to Robbie Williams swing by Pulp than back to electronica for a little minimalism than back to Robbie Williams than to grime, hang around grime, talk about grime, say grime is going to be huge, grime falls down and minimalism runs back in again, give some girl a microphone, Robbie Williams shows up, again, Pulp already fell apart, Jarvis Cocker loses all sense of direction, Robbie Williams releases a comic book, seriously and then, for the last twenty minutes of January 2006, dubstep. Which has probably already ended. Or it will, when Robbie Williams releases a novel, movie, soccer team or free make-out sesh's.
If anything, Burial shouldn't even exist--according to some dude on Amazon, there was only one copy of it at California's Amoeba Records, which has so many albums that it already has the three concept opera records you were thinking of releasing in two years when the man you haven't met yet breaks your heart. On top of that, Burial is an album that's been referenced as an argument a hell of a lot more than it's probably even been played, which begs the question, "When an album is read about far more than copies of it have been spun, should it be in the top ten?"
And the answer, simply put, is Yes. Not only is Burial one of, if not the, strongest debut LP's of 2006, it's one of the most innovative pieces of electronic music in a long while. Whereas the equally strong beats of Kode9's 2006 release are hidden beneath the dub vocals of Spaceape (who shows up on Burial as well,) the Burial LP is a near pristine gem of moody, dark sound, nearly unsullied by any perceivable human influence. The whole modus operandi behind Burial's attack on the overly sentimental sound coming from the equally influential Touch records, or the almost non-human robot sounds coming from Sweden and Denmark courtesy of minimalist 12-inchers is found, excitingly, in a sample from Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, "We gotta keep the old ways..." Electronic music, long before it became the soundtrack for movie action sequences, ecstasy and goofball dancing was an attempt by innovative artists to explore the potential of sound, the potential of music to be made in a way that had never been done before--it was tedious, difficult work, and was often a product of curious technicians exploring art after hours: people weren't using Protools or Macs, they were using card systems and room-filling servers. Is much of that stuff listenable, enjoyable--is it even interesting beyond a history lesson? Not really. But you can count, on one hand, the amount of times electronic music has done anything with the type of courage and ambition so often displayed in jazz and rock music, with the type of curiosity that inspired solitary technicians to punch numbers to make 20 second tracks. DJ Shadow did it, a cracked out Tricky did, and, in 2006, so did Hyperdub's Burial. While the album is something that comes across as fuss over nothing to many, and it makes for an immeasurably different experience on the headphones vs. speakers listen, it's an album that, will survive the six month love affair with dubstep and become a required listen for anyone who is craving something different than what rock and hip-hop have to offer.
-Tucker Stone, 2006
While Kode9's album gets a little too "huh" after a while, it's still an exciting listen. For other boundary pushing albums in genre's content to navel-gaze, check out Neck from The Chemists, a hypnotic jazz album that rivals Burial in the hard-to-find department, and Keith Fullerton Whitman's Lisbon, an album consisting of one 40-odd minute live track that trumps the critically-heralded Tim Hecker album by a ratio of 10,000 to 4.
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