Burial - Truant / Rough Sleeper

  On 1/6/2013 at 3:02 PM, usagi said:

the second(?) segment of Rough Sleeper is my favourite part of this release. the part that starts at 4:10, I mean.

 

  On 12/28/2012 at 3:10 AM, kaini said:

  Danny O Flannagin said:

I can't get over that organ on Rough Sleeper. Can't remember if this has been posted yet,

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETVGPWibx8

there's something in here... burial's first album had the shot of the wandsworth/croydon south london area on the cover, and this has... this. it makes a strange and satisfying sort of sense.

 

I feel so too, even though any 14 yr old could've put it together. but it's gotten into my head. that segment I'm referring to above, every time I listen to it I picture myself in lone orbit looking down upon the earth. I think it'd work really well on airplane flights too, that's probably the closest I'll get to my imagined experience.

I actually recently listened to this album while flying in a plane at night, I had the window seat and watched the lights of the urban grid gradually increase as I approached my destination.

i had an odd thought. streaming services like spotify pay per play. so if you have 2 long tracks you get paid less than if you split them into 6 tracks/parts?

is this the end of long music?

  Salvatorin said:

I actually recently listened to this album while flying in a plane at night, I had the window seat and watched the lights of the urban grid gradually increase as I approached my destination.

Same here. There is something about the glow of cities from above... Especially when they're obscured by a thin cloud cover and you can just see these massive orange, glowing blurs.

maybe this has been discussed already, but, do we know any of the songs that Burial samples for all those vocal bits? I vaguely remember hearing the "archangel" vocals awhile ago.

I used to think Burial was overrated when his first album was big. But these new songs after "Untrue" just seem to get better and better. The Street Halo ep is still my favorite, but rough sleeper is up there with his very best.

  Hanratty said:

maybe this has been discussed already, but, do we know any of the songs that Burial samples for all those vocal bits? I vaguely remember hearing the "archangel" vocals awhile ago.

 

I used to think Burial was overrated when his first album was big. But these new songs after "Untrue" just seem to get better and better. The Street Halo ep is still my favorite, but rough sleeper is up there with his very best.

there's an extremely in-depth list of the samples in 'untrue' on the wiki page.

this is just splendid

  On 1/16/2013 at 5:34 AM, usagi said:

were all of those Untrue samples cleared?

probably not all of them, some of them may have been

I think you get around sample clearance by using some cunning shenanigans - see also something like DJ Shadow's Entroducing which I suspect would be a nightmare if he sought clearance for everything :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS38JBh5gcw

is it necessary to get clearance when you completely change the melody?

I love Burial.

Dusty grungy clackity beats and slow waves of melancholic pads and sparse collages of soulful vocal shards.

In a world crammed with shitty anonymous glossy formulaic house music with no discernible character, Burial's textures are a breath of fresh opium smoke.

Yeah, he's brilliant.

I look foward too a new album, and a full 60 minute+ journey. Tbh at his rate and track lengths I can envisage a double album.

Personaly I can envisage no new albums and just more e.p's.... Hope am wrong though!

to be fair if he puts out a couple of e.ps of the length and quality of his recent stuff every year i would be happy anyway but a proper ablum would be sweet.

  On 1/10/2013 at 6:59 AM, drukqs said:

  On 1/10/2013 at 6:19 AM, Awepittance said:

i still don't get Burial. Its not bad music i just don't how people are emotionally connecting to it, it feels very samey to me.

Maybe i have to be british to understand the importance of garage music or something, but i just feel like music that samples so many female vocal sounds is kinda cheap. I also couldn't get into the new Andy Stott for similar reasons. There are people who do it exceedingly well like Machinedrum on rooms, but more often than not it feels like a very low-end easy way to make an average song sound 'pop' with little effort. I still think Burial's first album is a very strong work and relied far less on plundered pop vocal samples.

 

All I can say is that I know how you feel. When I first downloaded Untrue after my friends recommended it, I just didn't understand it. It felt really fake and unimpressive. But then I gave it another shot and listened to Etched Headplate during math because it was the one song I liked. I kept listening to it because somehow it helped me concentrate, it was nice and spacey and warm. And then the rainy Oregon days started fizzling in as the weeks went by and on one particular day, when I was in a really shitty mood, I put it on and everything just clicked.

 

For me, it's the connection between the music and rainy streets of the city/suburb at night that gets me. The feeling of being a ghost riding your bike between the golden kitchen lights of suburban houses and condos, the streets empty, families eating dinner or already asleep, completely unaware of your brief presence as you breeze through their neighborhood. Seeing the city lights reflect off the waterfront in a fireworks of wavering artificiality, and the ramifications that artificiality has on us as people, I feel is what Burial's music brings me/others closer to. He almost gives the "loners and drifters of the night" (lol sounds angsty) a voice, using the crooning vocals of some distant, androgynous singer* that is "buried" beneath the metallic clicks, clacks, and groaning** of the beat and the bass, and lastly the soft, ambient vinyl hiss faded into the backdrop***.

 

*the singer, to me, representing the human element

**the metallic noises representing the metallic city that surrounds and buries us

***the vinyl hiss representing the rain, which will ultimately prevail, as we all know, water = the ultimate erosion and decay of our concrete empire. Also rainy days generally fucking suck, especially if you have no choice but to be exposed to the rain and cold. Or if you're homeless.

 

Not to get all pretentiously poetic and shit, but that's the way it resonates with me personally.

 

Edit:

 

If you don't want to read my emotional/sensitive./weepy wall of text: Basically, Burial knows how to personify the feeling of a rainy city day into song.

Funny to read this, I recently saw or read something about Flying Lotus where he was talking about how he was from America and thus didn't get Burial (he presumed), and when he toured through England and was in a car with Thom Yorke (or whoever) listening to Burial and it being typical British shite rain weather, suddenly it clicked for him. Same for me, but it was mainly the album cover of Untrue that pursuaded me to listen to it and helped contextualize the mood of the album.

Just listened to Truant EP on vinyl, I really dig this new style. I always thought the Untrue tracks were way too short, so I like this new direction, hope a full-length will be made out of it.

Been listening to this for a while now. Really digging it.

Anyone else notice the minecraft spider sample in Truant?

Totally in there. That noise the spider makes, I loled.

"Rough Sleeper" is absolutely amazing. The other track not quite as much but still high-quality Burial material. Really good release.

I really don't get the complaint of all of his music sounding the same.

Yes, the techniques used are the same. There is plenty of music written for jazz trio: piano bass and drums, that do not all sound the same, beyond the most surface level listening "oh, all I hear is piano, bass, and drums" yeah it's not about the instrumentation, it's about the composition, and Burial fucking kicks ass at composing his songs. He does it in his style, with his unique identity. There is a reason that Skrillex song sucks, and its not because he uses pitched vocals, dark pads, and shuffled beats. It's because he can't write a song with subtly to save his life. It's why all of the imitators of Burials sound have not received the same level of success: you can't imitate someone's approach to writing music. Go out and buy the exact guitar and amps etc that Jimi Hendrix used, and none of that will make you actually sound like Jimi Hendrix, at least not the soul of it. Hell, even studying his chords and technique won't make you sound like Jimi Hendrix. On the surface you might think it sounds the same, but then again, that's the surface.

I think people forget that writing music, actually putting your heart, soul, and identity into your art, is something that cannot be copied or faked or whatever.

Burial has a unique voice, and he his execution is fucking on point. His sense of timing and phrasing is musical and tasteful. I've listened to so much of music thinking about what I am actually hearing, and I am continually amazed that at any given point, its really just a combination of a synth/pad, bass, a vocal sample, rain, and a beat. That's pretty much it, and yet all of his tracks are compelling and emotional, and yes, different. It's called composition, and I rather give a shit about that, than his production. Unfortunately I feel like people consider that element less and less these days.

Anyways, end of rant.

Well said Kcinsu

  On 1/20/2013 at 12:02 AM, Kcinsu said:

I really don't get the complaint of all of his music sounding the same.

 

Yes, the techniques used are the same. There is plenty of music written for jazz trio: piano bass and drums, that do not all sound the same, beyond the most surface level listening "oh, all I hear is piano, bass, and drums" yeah it's not about the instrumentation, it's about the composition, and Burial fucking kicks ass at composing his songs. He does it in his style, with his unique identity. There is a reason that Skrillex song sucks, and its not because he uses pitched vocals, dark pads, and shuffled beats. It's because he can't write a song with subtly to save his life. It's why all of the imitators of Burials sound have not received the same level of success: you can't imitate someone's approach to writing music. Go out and buy the exact guitar and amps etc that Jimi Hendrix used, and none of that will make you actually sound like Jimi Hendrix, at least not the soul of it. Hell, even studying his chords and technique won't make you sound like Jimi Hendrix. On the surface you might think it sounds the same, but then again, that's the surface.

 

I think people forget that writing music, actually putting your heart, soul, and identity into your art, is something that cannot be copied or faked or whatever.

 

Burial has a unique voice, and he his execution is fucking on point. His sense of timing and phrasing is musical and tasteful. I've listened to so much of music thinking about what I am actually hearing, and I am continually amazed that at any given point, its really just a combination of a synth/pad, bass, a vocal sample, rain, and a beat. That's pretty much it, and yet all of his tracks are compelling and emotional, and yes, different. It's called composition, and I rather give a shit about that, than his production. Unfortunately I feel like people consider that element less and less these days.

 

Anyways, end of rant.

Great rant!

Best post of the year.

  On 1/19/2013 at 4:09 PM, Herr Jan said:

Funny to read this, I recently saw or read something about Flying Lotus where he was talking about how he was from America and thus didn't get Burial (he presumed), and when he toured through England and was in a car with Thom Yorke (or whoever) listening to Burial and it being typical British shite rain weather, suddenly it clicked for him. Same for me, but it was mainly the album cover of Untrue that pursuaded me to listen to it and helped contextualize the mood of the album.

maybe he didn't get because he's from sunny california. where I'm from we get plenty of depressing weather.

Is no one amazed by the sampling of minecraft?

He has sampled Silent Hill 3 before - why is minecraft so surprising?

I think Burial also sampled 'The Lost Day' by Brian Eno a couple of times. Burial uses a chime sample fairly often that sounds like something I've heard from the 'On Land' album before...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD5sMxoyKLE

Edit: listening back i don't think it's this track, but Burial has sampled Eno before at any rate.

In ashtray wasp there is a stone roses sample. Think its elephant stone I was quite suprised by that.

  On 1/20/2013 at 3:03 AM, Face Culler said:

He has sampled Silent Hill 3 before - why is minecraft so surprising?

Because no one else seems to have noticed.

where is the minecraft sample?