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Burial, "Untrue"
In 1997, Bristol's trip-hop troubadours Portishead released their self-titled sophomore album, a deeply moving account of agonizing, feverish love and world-weary heartbreak. Its forlorn brilliance stunned me, leading me to privately refer to it as the soundtrack to a suicide. Now, another British electronic musician follows up a critically acclaimed breakthrough with a superlative sequel that, for me, shares both that ominous honor and my firm vote for Album of the Year.
Hyperdub
Although both acts employ liberal sampling policies in their recordings, where Portishead featured lush maximal production, Untrue succumbs instead to the understated aesthetic power of ascetic piety, self-flagellating while furnishing unexpected perverse indulgences in the empty spaces between figurative whip cracks. The carefully selected, vigilantly spliced vocal samples belie a consuming sadness in the soul, both of the man and his music. The revelation of a few of the original sources behind these samples sparked a ridiculous argument about copyright infringement on a prominent online forum, just one example of the divisiveness and rabidity Burial’s music leaves in its wake. In the end, it doesn't matter whether or not the unstoppable, jaw-dropping anthem "Archangel" co-opts bits of Ray J's "One Wish" or that "Etched Headplate" subtly appropriates and elegantly warps also-ran Amanda Perez’s perhaps best known tune. Rather, what should drive the debate is just how the artist lovingly though mercilessly utilizes this material to construct entirely different songs.
Pregnant with sacrosanct significance, Untrue follows zealously along its conceptual path with hardly any deviation from its aseptic mix of muted 2-step garage beats and uncompromising atmospheres. Formula can often kill album-length releases in single-oriented electronic music subgenres, but it works faultlessly here on cuts like the indomitable "Shell of Light" and "Ghost Hardware," the latter released on vinyl as well as digitally as a teasing prelude to the album. As on his first full-length, Burial dodges the bullet of monotony by interspersing curious ambient passages among the stuttering rhythmic tracks. Although on the surface "In McDonalds" might be a stupid name for a track, the gravity in its woefully brief duration negates any concern or skepticism with obtuse crackles and pads, punctuated at the very end by three simple but contextually hefty words: "you look different."
Entombed by the cumulative emotional weight of these 13 devastating new productions, I reluctantly wonder whether the pseudonymous recluse known as Burial isn't himself in a dire, depressive state of mind. How could an artist in isolation compose such gorgeous, tortured music and not give serious consideration to desperate, baleful thoughts? Where some find themselves inescapably awestruck and inspired by the beauty of Buria'’s obscured soul, his music actually troubles me to my core. The detatched moans on the penultimate track "Homeless" leads me to picture a sullen young man brooding in the corner, sobbing genuinely and despondently. Untrue isn't uplifting but self-destructive, overflowing with a poisonous despondency. This should be taken as a warning sign. Someone please reach out and give this lonely, talented man a call tonight.
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