A Weekend with Burial.

Occasionally there are those days when I get completely drawn in by a song or an album to a point of obsession. Those are the moments when I can put that song or album on repeat for a whole day. This weekend was one of those times and the obsession was the British Dub-Step producer named Burial. I have fallen completely in love with his sound, particularly his last album titled “Untrue” and his latest release the “Street Halo” EP. Burial’s music is cinematic in nature. It has a certain texture to it that I can’t put in words. All I know is when I play his music; it is almost as if I get transported to a gritty section of an urban town in England in the middle of the night, when all the streets are empty.

 Burial’s music contains elements of house music but it is impossible to dance to it. The beats themselves sound as if they are broken and clipped; making them a bit jerky and awkward. Dark synths lay in the background and they occasionally work their way to the foreground, amplifying the cinematic gloom. In addition some distorted samples and unidentifiable sounds wiz around, creating a haunting affect. The samples are taken from generic R&B artists such as Ray-J but they are processed, manipulated and positioned in a manner that makes them both creepy and beautiful.

Burial’s genius lays in the way that he takes these elements and incorporates them together seamlessly. Everything is placed at the right time and layered gorgeously; making it quite a familiar and foreign to the ears. This might be a bad analogy but I feel like his music is 3D, because to the way that the sound hits the listener at different and unexpected angles. Burial laid the soundtrack to my weekend and I hope that someone like Lebron James listens to some of this stuff. The man was simply buried by the Mavs. 

Song of the Day is "Stolen Dog" by Burial.