BURIAL - Untrue

That green dot you weren't expecting has finally reappeared on our overcrowded radar: unidentified coordinates once again signalling the welcome presence of the mysterious Hyperdub MIG, better known to most by his alias Burial. Bass as heavy as lead, counterbalancing an ethereal surge of shadowy electronic blasts, forms the backbone of a rhythmic structure that's downright alien.

The weaning of a whole scene, (re)christened dubstep, continues its mad, ever-evolving cycle on the mysterious London producer's second pragmatic move. Kode9, the deus ex machina behind Hyperdub, sits down at the mixing desk, produces, and takes a bow.

On “Untrue”, Burial tries to bring into focus all the multifaceted experiences that have fed the phenomenon over the course of a year: alongside Benga, Vex'd, Kode9, Skream!, Digital Mystikz, Shackleton and Appleblim (owners of the seminal Skull Disco) he reinvents himself without upending what he'd already planted with his debut, searching out a new horizon for the whole "breaks" movement.

With that deafening substrate of pachydermic beats partly stripped away, Burial strengthens his melodic core by inserting, into an alien context, soul choirs (!) via absurd vocal samples, impalpable instrumental orientalisms, and syrupy lounge digressions paradoxically close to the deepest house music, effectively coining new critical adjectives for what is, today without a doubt, the plausible heir to Nineties 2-step/UK garage.

It's still a hushed voice that introduces our hero's exploits, before we turn the page and run into the most unexpected of visions. "Archangel" is the primary depiction of Burial's brand-new ambitions: a Motown flower transplanted onto Albion's soil, an angelic song proclaiming vengeance; the production stretches beyond the boundaries of rhythm, treating the vocal as an effect to be manipulated with every phrase. Hatred and new love, behind a shield of dub pulses, sacred keyboards, archaic landscapes: by comparison, Notre Dame looks like a little chapel for Waikiki tourists.

We mentioned earlier the rhythms Burial manages to put together, and this is perhaps the one step that still sets him stylistically apart from the rest. He says he likes crooked beats, that he enjoys playing with them, and in this game he ends up overlapping and fusing distant ideas. He pushes his vision even further vertically, redefining it into a thousand layers that are never compressed but left free to touch and drift apart, creating fascinating, hazy sonic environments.

There are plenty of certainties with this record, chief among them that Kode9's protégé has certainly not stopped to just "phone it in" — quite the opposite. "Untrue" projects the image of a man who seems to have found his own path to dub, aiming squarely to shake up the convictions of many once again. He has managed to open up: the darkness of the debut has grown less dense, both around the man and around what he wants to tell us. Everything is in order; there's still that certain something missing, but it will come — I already know that he already knows it.

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15/11/2007