Burial, maker of music

Crap
Total votes: 31 (69%)
Not crap
Total votes: 14 (31%)
Total votes: 45

Musical concern: Burial

431
I think that if you are to read Reynolds, you need to be prepared to occasionally follow him up his own firmanent. I don't mind this too much because i.) he usually writes something that I find unusual and provoking; and ii.) it is actually quite funny. Occasionally on reading him, I blink and I see "BARLEY!!!" flash in multicolour on my screen.
Gib Opi kein Opium, denn Opium bringt Opi um!

Musical concern: Burial

434
sparky wrote:Might be interesting to revisit this now that the rancour and ill-feeling has had time to die down.


Sparky, that’s awfully broad-minded and optimistic of you, but I just don’t think you’re gonna get a non-ideological assessment of this music (is such a thing even possible?).

As for rock is kitsch, I amend my statement. Most rock I care about is kitschy/campy (which is really what I meant). The rest is just math rock.

Musical concern: Burial

435
Simon Reynolds wrote:The other thought I had about Burial in particular, and dubstep in general, is that it's basically
Macro Dub Infection meets Isolationism, if you think about it. Actually one of the best tracks on Isolationism is David Toop & Max Eastley's "Burial Rites (Phosporescent)" and the duo did a whole album called Buried Dreams, right?.And the big isolationist dude in those days (93-94) was Thomas Koner who via Porter Ricks and the whole Chain Reaction/Basic Channel/Rhythm & Sound nexus connects up quite nicely with dubstep. And fuck me but don't the Berlin contingent actually have a sub-label called Burial Mix. (And how come no reviewer i've seen has yet mentioned Nuum-ancestral tune "The Burial" by Leviticus, or indeed the whole burial tune ,sound-system-finishing-off-its-rival killertrack connotation?).

I wrote a piece about Isolationism back in '94 and said it was very interesting but (more to have an angle than as a real critique really) had a bit at the end saying "but it's a bit white, though", pointing to similar doomy and chiliastic vibes in trip hop (tricky with "aftermath" and "ponderosa", DJ Shadow's elegaics, the darkside of jungle, etc). Dubstep, fusing the abstract atmospherics and emptiness of isolationism with the foreboding bass-pressure of the reggaematic UK sound system-influenced Bristol-London 'Nuum , could almost be an answer to that last paragraph.

The key difference between Isolationism and dubstep isn't just a matter of the first having no rhythm or groove, though, it's a subtle shift of emphasis. Isolationism had this monastic/hermetic impulse to seek out empty space, depopulated vistas (sort of ECM album cover but without the Bachelard-esque "intimate immensity", more like an aloof inclemency, an utter indifference verging on hostility to the human).... Koner with his series of albums inspired by Antarctica, or the way the other artists on Isolationism induced mind's eye reveries of deserts, tundra, subterranean grottoes, virgin planets; extremes of climate or temperature, like the polar twilight in Siberia, or the interior of the Sun. Whereas dubstep (and again Burial specifially) is very much about built-up areas, urban space, places that should be bustling with life.... but are now uncannily, eerily empty. Either that, or just lonely-making. Dubstep is desolationist.


"Killertrack Connotation." Would not see a band called.

How would it ever be possible to aurally differentiate between:

(a) an "intimate immensity" (bullshit term) of wide-open spaces, virgin planets, and "extremes of climate or temperature" (what?)

AND

(b) "built-up areas, urban space...places which are now uncannily, eerily empty"; i.e. "desolate" urban places?

Can you hear the presence of the buildings, or, alternatively, the sand and the ocean? Isn't (a) just as desolate and depopulated, just as lonely as (b)? So wouldn't (a) and (b) be basically the same in terms of their stylistic attributes, and in terms of the moods they evoke? If that is true, then isn't this entire paragraph based on a silly distinction between ad hoc techno music genres?

The only place you'll find prose clotted up with more name-checks and sandbox mumbo-jumbo is in the pages of Robert Christgau.
Gay People Rock

Musical concern: Burial

439
NerblyBear wrote:How would it ever be possible to aurally differentiate between:

(a) an "intimate immensity" (bullshit term) of wide-open spaces, virgin planets, and "extremes of climate or temperature" (what?)

AND

(b) "built-up areas, urban space...places which are now uncannily, eerily empty"; i.e. "desolate" urban places?


"Aurally differentiate" is a particularly long-winded way of missing the point of the above. Frippery notwithstanding, Reynolds evokes two very different kinds of environment that he believes two different types of musician are trying to translate into music. From what I understand of your critique, you imply that music can only evoke a situation through approximating what it sounds like. Which is a proposition absurd enough to fill me with glee.
Gib Opi kein Opium, denn Opium bringt Opi um!

Musical concern: Burial

440
sparky wrote:Edited to remove wee hour meanness, which leaves nothing at all.


I saw it.

Is this music really a concern? I'm not concerned. It just sounds like any electronic dance stuff to me. It sounds like an over-priced martini at some place I got fooled into going to...or an Audi commercial.

Did anyone read the article on the front page? More recording artists should just be nameless and faceless. Just leave it in the jukebox.

And as mindless and gay as electronic dance and rave/club music might sound, the thought of finding about a music event somewhere in the woods or desert sounds pretty appealing...you know, if the music didnt suck. Like, a Kyuss generator party with better music. Like like like...finding some band out in the woods that sounded like the Boredoms or Fela kuti...I dont know...sounds appealing to me...tha same way a basement show was pre-internet.

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