Burial: Untrue (CD)

Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his South London Boroughs EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005.

Burial returns with Untrue, a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised r&b and smudged 2step 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. The album continues with the debut’s crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of ‘Archangel‘, ‘Near Dark‘ and ‘Ghost Hardware‘, before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where Burial first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, Untrue is less sunless.

1. Archangel
2. Near Dark
3. Homeless
4. Shell Of Light
5. Raver
6. Etched Headplate
7. Untrue
8. UK
9. Endorphin