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Published on 7/24/08
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“I saw the light,” says a haunted, disembodied voice that opens Burial’s devastating second album. “It burns forever.” This afterglow is the emotional core of the determinedly anonymous U.K. artist’s aching sound; much like his self-titled debut of last year, Untrue conjures a palpable feeling of loss.
But what’s been lost is rooted in U.K. club culture’s recent past, and thus could seem even more distant to U.S. listeners. Here, the rave community centered on an of-the-moment hedonism; the U.K.’s rave and jungle scenes of the ’90s involved some genuine idealism for a better future. Here or there, that future never arrived.
Even if Burial’s music holds more intrinsic meaning to Brits, its structural brilliance should amaze anyone. The main difference on Untrue is that it’s more populated—provided ghosts count. Burial was like a solitary man’s journey through an abandoned, nocturnal London; on Untrue, sampled voices are everywhere, phasing in out of context from soulful house records, only to dissipate, as on “Endorphin,” before they can break into full reverie. Mournful rushes of synth, unsequenced beats (i.e., not evenly spaced) and the artist’s signature spray of static arrange like translucent sheets, as the vocals flicker in and out. Somehow, it’s easier to imagine dancing to this music than it would be to actually do it; throughout the album, we’re teased with images of a party we just can’t get to. For anyone who’s yearned for a better past that we keep moving further away from, Untrue will resonate heavily.
—Mike Wolf
