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May 8th, 2006 by Jonathan Fletcher (Permalink)
Label: Hyperdub Year: 2006 Add Comments |
Some time in 1997, I rolled into a jungle night some place in Manchester. Already disheartened, gradually plummeting into alienation from a culture that had reconfigured (remade/ remodelled) my body which was now addicted to a vanishing drug. Years earlier, innumerable dancers had cart-wheeled into a music that was felt as much as heard and that was experienced socially instead of in isolation. Indeed, this was a new form of communication as ravers were danced by the lights and noise, as we communicated through hands and not voices, becoming an amorphous mass of not-human within the raving machine. The emotional wrench of the inevitable mainstream co-option left many jaded and lost. This was drum’n’bass now, the name change an instant indicator that goddamned musicians were taking over, people with something to prove. That night, sensing the end and desperately seeking the rush, I stumbled into an empty club. This eerie vacant space, spewing anarchic haphazard light, broadcast soulless stoned techstep, harsh and rigorous with all the Ecstatic elements vanished (speedy sampled vocals, plasticity, affect to effect, the ‘cartoon’ elements that were snobbishly derided but were a vital part of the futuristic insanely joyous noise. Destroyed that night, I was equal parts heartbroken and freaked out.
Out of the blue (black), in 2006, Burial has seemingly penned the soundtrack to that very night, a ‘Maxinquaye’ for this dark and strange decade. Burial’s (sunken) audio foundation then is dubstep (to be explored in greater detail in a rapidly forthcoming feature), which for those that don’t know is a stark warped hybrid of rave, jungle, reggae and dub which has existed in one form or another for nearly 6 years. This long player is out on Hyperdub, whose head honcho, Kode 9, has been a major part of the scene since its beginnings and long before but Burial is keeping his own identity a mystery, replacing emphasis back on to the sound and away from personality, a move well worth applauding. And here, within its cover art, an almost Tarkovsky-like view of South London, the emphasis on space and spectrality has never been employed to such powerful, poignant effect. This is a uniquely parallel, wholly uncanny creation.
The press release alludes to a London underwater, a Ballardian disaster zone, a deserted counterpart to Blade Runner’s nu-tropical LA. This is a foggy sound, the sonic genderless ambiguity of My Bloody Valentine after a decade-long comedown or Gas with an urban sensibility. Most startling are the historical references, the sonic ghosts of rave and jungle reanimated (subterranean sampled vocals circling like seagulls, melodic riffs and the deepest bass exuding warmth and motion) but hidden in sidereal sound. The devil is in the details and these are audibly glimpsed but too vague to focus on. There is such depth here, you could walk in this space but it’s paradoxically full of sonic detritus- an epically subdued reverberating soundscape. The densely complex 2 step rhythms come across as a ghost waltz- an unhinged Charleston. Everything emotes though- this is not techboy wank, a clinically precise experiment. Burial’s dedicated non-musicianship extends towards allegedly using only one programme with no sequencing- even the beats avoid rigid time. As Burial digs backwards, doors open towards a possible future.
The crackle that saturates the album is that of pirate radio (the ravers/ junglists/ steppers communication network- one song is called ‘Pirates’ and fizzes lysergically with voices), vinyl, rain and fire. Its spiritual atmosphere is not a million miles removed from Coil’s fireside glitch (‘Broccoli’ in dread dancing shoes). But, Burial’s love of rain is an intriguing one- it always startled me how early junglist tunes like Roni Size’s ‘Music Box’ and Gerald’s ‘Finlay’s Rainbow’ piled on so much rhythm that they literally sounded like it was raining. In fact, the formers sampled refrain of “That dream is over” would make an appropriate subtitle here.
Parts of the album feel like it could be furtively detailing a lover’s discourse. “Distant Lights” offers both a male and female voice from the same sample, pleading “Now that I need [met?] you” whilst the wraith-like vocal quote of “You Hurt Me” sounds like the ghost of a couple’s photograph. “Gutted” seemingly hopelessly meditates on what sounds like the departure of “my love”.
Kode 9 comrade, Spaceape, brings his mystical urban preachers drawl to the song of the same name, announcing the audio virus “we are hostile aliens/ immune from dying”, a clarion call to those born on the dance floor, living in the bass and looking for home. ‘Wounder’ pivots on the sound of an abandoned public address system stuttering back into life but broadcasting silence to a desolate cityscape. ‘Night Bus’ is Aphex Twin circa Ambient Works volume 2 rerouted into this drowned urbanity whilst ‘Southern Comfort’ almost walks with a bruised subterranean skank. ‘Forgive’ maybe offers the most extraordinary vocal of the whole album, a loop of what sounds like the spirit of an alien child captured as electronic voice phenomenon.
But if I’ve painted a picture of this music as bleak or unhopeful, that is not the case. There is a startling peculiar poignant hope amidst all these aural spectres, an aching future possibility. A way out.
Maybe we’ve been Harry Caul and got the emphasis wrong. Maybe it’s just “that dream” thats over. But, there’s plenty more dreams in the sea.
So really, this is not the past now but a future present: a direction, a signal, a hope.
www.k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/
http://www.blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com/
Released 15/05/06
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