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To cityĭwellers, all of these sounds speak strongly of the minutiae of everyday life within an urban environment, both through direct sonic representation and association.Īt Berlin's CTM Festival a couple of weeks ago, I watched a couple of documentaries and a talk on urban exploration by Bradley L Garrett, who, tQ-conveniently, has also made a recent documentary on the Olympic development in the area our office is situated in. Even the very melodic synth drone that draws the track to a close becomes, when inspected closely enough, a dissonant cacophony of car horns at a busy intersection. Within the title track a thunderstorm bellows away in the background, while further in the foreground percussion (pointing more strongly towards jungle than anything he's done before) comes in violent slashes, like the rapid sharpening of knives in a takeaway restaurant. But one of the first things that's striking about Kindred – the follow-up proper to the lovely Street Halo EP, and the first we've heard from Burial since his super-limited Massive Attack collaboration – is how much wider he casts the net. The obvious elements that have been noticeable since Burial’s early work are still present: vinyl crackle and static as the patter of raindrops on the roof of a bus shelter sub-bass as great volcanic belches and whipping wind, like the stale air and omnipresent rumble of a tube train beats built from very organic sound sources – the clack of train carriage on rail, the clink of a Zippo lighter, the slamming of a door.
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But it's notable that, when playing Kindred while out and about in London, the bleed of natural sound from outside the headphones feels completely contingent with the music itself. Public transport is often mentioned in the same breath as his music – how could it not be, when named a song on his self-titled debut album 'Night Bus'? He's certainly inspired no shortage of thesaurus-abusing “it sounds like a wasted post-club journey home with the night's music still ringing in your ears” chatter. Listening to any of his records – and Kindred is no exception – it's very apparent how strongly they're grounded in physical reality (something Adam Harper explored in some depth a couple of years ago in his excellent analysis of Burial's earlier music). The answer lies, I think, in his deep-seated connection to the world immediately surrounding him. So why, when Kindred's opening title track flickers to life and those tiny slivers of human life immediately start to bob and weave in and out of frame, do Burial's productions still elicit such a powerful emotional response, despite operating within such an ostensibly familiar idiom? And it's not as though he even invented the approach - as with so many producers working within the regions skirting UK garage and two-step, its roots lie in the deft cut & paste collages of Marc Kinchen and Todd Edwards in the 90s. In London at the moment, it feels as though you can't travel more than a few metres without bumping into another producer using similar pitchshifted vocal inflections to far lesser effect (the law of diminishing returns ought to be a powerful deterrent, but somehow at this point the message just isn't getting across).
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The first and most obvious question this response raises is 'Why Burial?' What is it about his music - a product of the underground, and pretty far removed from anything remotely pop-leaning - that strikes such a deep chord with such a wide range of people, where most of his contemporaries fail to do so?īurial's treatment of the human voice, premiered in full on second album Untrue, has a lot to answer for. When Burial's new EP Kindred was released digitally on Sunday night, the strength of public reaction slowed the Hyperdub website to a crawl, as people squeezed their way into the label's online shop to grab a copy.
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"There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in"