Music CD - Burial: Untrue

	Music CD: Untrue Artist: Burial List Price: $17.98 Our Price: $12.38 Your Save: $ 5.60 ( 31% ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Manufacturer: Hyperdub Records
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Tracks: 1. Untitled 2. Archangel 3. Near Dark 4. Ghost Hardware 5. Endorphin 6. Etched Headplate 7. In McDonalds 8. Untrue 9. Shell Of Light 10. Dog Shelter 11. Homeless 12. UK 13. Raver
Binding: Audio CD EAN: 5024545486520 Label: Hyperdub Records Manufacturer: Hyperdub Records Number Of Discs: 1 Publisher: Hyperdub Records Release Date: 2007-11-06 Studio: Hyperdub Records
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Are they having a laugh? Comment: I know this album is getting all these great reviews and people with really great taste can't get enough of it, but I don't get it! Yes, the first track is amazing, but the entire rest of the album sounds nearly exactly the same. In fact, the first time I played it I thought, "Wow, what a long song," only to find out that I was already on track 6! I am sure there are subtleties that I am missing, but I think this should have been sold as an EP, or as a EP of remixes, since they all do sound like the same song. I would love for someone to show me the error of my thought processing on this one, how could so many of you be wrong? Customer Rating: Summary: Exquisite rainy Sunday morning music Comment: I found a review of this album on Pitchfork Media and while I've always had a love-hate relationship with that website's reviews something struck a chord with me and when they named it the 10th best album of 2007 I decided to give Burial's "Untrue" a shot. I'm really glad I did because it's one of the best discs of 2007. A tight combination of electronic, soul, dubstep (a new genre I was not familiar with before hearing this) and a little hip-hop, the music is indescribably good, with synths floating behind practically every track, vocals at times strangely altered, frenetic beats, and dub bass making it presence known here and there. You know you're in for a special listening experience when a sound clip from David Lynch's film "Inland Empire" is used in the opening track "Untitled". My favorite tracks are "Ghost Hardware", the poignant, hypnotic "Endorphin" with alien sounding vocals, "Dog Shelter" with its gentle, bittersweet synths and the relentless, bouncy "Shell of Light" with it's beautiful female backing vocals and dreamy outro that lasts for a gorgeous 1 min. 15 seconds. Many of the tracks generate images of the gritty, urban rain-washed streets of London. The music on this album sounds like a perfect mixture of Massive Attack, 90's electronic-techno greats Future Sound of London, and the UK hip-hop outfit The Streets. The music envelops you in an almost otherwordly, melancholy atmosphere, great to listen to all alone on a rainy Sunday morning. I may have to give Pitchfork more credit than I'm used to, since they really hit a bull's eye on this one. Customer Rating: Summary: Great mood piece, but too repetitive Comment: This appears to be one of those albums which would appeal more to critics than to the general, album-buying public. I think it's a unique work, very evocative and moody, meticulously crafted and produced, nicely blending dubstep and R & B, simultaneously dirty and crystaline in structure. Yet each track sounds, to my ears, very much like the previous one. Of course there are differences and shifts, but their subtlety relegates this work as one for studied, rather than for casual, listening. It struck me very similar in temperament and tone to Plasticman's "Consumed" from 10 yrs back. Ultimately, after repeated listens, I found too little movement between or within the songs on this album for me to recommend it or place it in heavy rotation, and though I do appreciate the artist's contribution in forwarding/expanding the genre, I think Burial's "Untrue" is overrated by critics. Customer Rating: Summary: IF you like THIS... Comment: Message to adventurous explorers of the music kingdom who enjoy the music on "Untrue" by Burial... let me point you on down the road a bit to something else you will probably enjoy when you are ready: Burial is sampling here, building collages with those samples, making a lot of references to loss and betrayal and showing us some bleak, dimly lit urban landscapes. If you have a taste for that, check out a CD titled Streamer by Nils Petter Molvaer. He creates big, dark, echoing expanses and decorates them with angular neon spikes and urban textures. Molvaer has several tasty CDs in this vein. Khmer is another favorite, though it is hard to choose from all the delicious music Molvaer has recorded. Another artist from Europe doing a similar style (to Molvaer) is horn player Erik Truffaz. You won't find as much cut and paste sampling of vocal tracks but the spaces and textures are similar. Try Saloua for a good taste of his "urban spaces at twilight." Finally, though not quite as dark (or you could maybe say a bit more optimistic) you might try "Melange Bleu" from Lars Danielsson. This is sliding over into jazz territory a little. The sonic spaces are still expansive, the bass still pumps, the urban vibe is still very present and periodically a mysterious voice calls out across dimly lit landscapes. Enjoy... well if "enjoy" is the correct term for music that tends toward solitary dimly lit introspection. Shuffling around in the dark here, hmmm, think I dropped my keys somewhere. Customer Rating: Summary: Burial's music isn't the future, but it might express the present. Comment: A minor change in tone can make a big difference. Burial's second album comes across as more listenable and original than his first, even though his compositional style has mostly stayed the same. He still uses the same jerky, bone-dry rhythms that characterized the first album, on many tracks like "Near Dark," "Ghost Hardware," and "Untrue." These beats still sound interchangeable -- hurried and nervous, occasionally missing the beat (deliberately, according to Burial; he doesn't like his drums to sound too precise) but without real hooks to make them stick in the mind. There are also quiet moments like "Night Bus" from the first album, but this time there are many more of them. "Endorphin," "In McDonalds," "Dog Shelter" and "UK" are all soft ambient interludes. Untrue also uses more vocals than its predecessor, and this time they are less heavily treated and thus more recognizable as human voices. So, the ambient tracks are graced with gentle soul crooning, with the usual melancholy production, that makes them sound like torch songs reimagined for Burial's desolate image of contemporary London. What's missing from this album is the sense of dread. There's nothing as lonely and eerie as "Distant Lights." There's less echo and reverberation overall, so Untrue never quite attains the same stark, sombre mood. The bass and tape hiss are also less oppressive and murky, so even though the drum tracks are very similar to some of the middling songs from the first album like "Wounder," they seem a little lighter here. That's the minor change in tone that greatly changes the overall impression. In an interview, Burial characterized the album as more "glowy" and joyful than its predecessor, and he's right, not because it's really all that uplifting, but because those few darkest mood pieces are absent. As a consequence, Untrue recalls Bryn Jones less frequently than the first album (although I still think he provided a lot of Burial's inspiration), which makes it sound more original. The lack of a "Distant Lights" or a "Gutted" is a bit disappointing, since the apocalyptic feel was the most impressive aspect of the first album. But to make up for that, Burial makes a few concessions to mainstream dance music. Which is a good thing. Not only does it not compromise his music (which he remains as earnestly concerned about as ever), it results in his best work to date. "Archangel" in particular is the closest he's ever come to a hit single. It employs all of his usual earmarks -- warped vocals, hollow drums, echo -- but arranges the vocal sample into a concise, standout hook. The voice is singing some sentimental line, but the production renders it only half intelligible and thus mysterious, and the distortion gives it an unearthly sound to fit the title. "Etched Headplate" features an even more striking manipulation of vocal samples. It starts with a long intro consisting of background noise suddenly and powerfully punctuated by deep bass chords. Then a fairly standard dance beat kicks in, soon joined by vocals. As always in Burial's music, the vocals are distorted and cut up, but here the vocal fragments are arranged to move with the beat and rhythmically snake around it. I kind of wish he'd done this with the entire song from which he took the sample, rather than just repeating the same couple of lines, but even as it is, the track is an otherworldly dance-dirge, with echoing gibberish as the main rhythmic hook. The way the vocals flow with the beat makes this the single most original and memorable track on the album. "Shell Of Light" is written along similar lines, with less elaborate vocals. This time the hook consists of one word, repeated in distorted falsetto. It sounds almost like some kind of disco chorus, but that's exactly why it's interesting to hear it in tandem with a dark, bass-heavy Burial production. And then, at the very end, there's "Raver," which follows all the rules of classic eighties house, with a simple beat backed by vocal samples and warm strings. But this is also presented the Burial way -- the warm strings are a bit muted, they always seem to rise from the background without ever really taking the lead. This reflects Burial's sentimental attitude toward old rave music, and exemplifies the "downcast euphoria" that he wanted to portray. Paradoxically, despite the classicist structure, it's actually one of Burial's most distinctive creations. Instead of a big triumphant party atmosphere like "Strings Of Life," "Raver" suggests a minor emotional thaw or a moment of vulnerability. Untrue isn't perfect. I think many of Burial's ideas are still unrealized, even here, mostly due to the long "clattering" tracks with similar rhythms. It's not like Burial cares about my opinion, but I wish he'd reconcile the danceable strain in his music, as depicted here, with the doomy dark-ambient touches in his first album, and ditch the tedious, rattling middle of the road between these extremes. But any dance producer working today should be listening to this album -- Burial is one of the few musicians whose work suggests some kind of coherent image of his time, even if its creator has yet to fully articulate it. More Reviews
Editorial Reviews: 2007 sophomore release from the UK's mysterious and much-acclaimed Burial. Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Untrue, is a record of weird Soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporized R&B and smudged two-step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. Forget central heating -- the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter.