Burial: An Essay

First off, this isn't a proper essay in the schoolwork sense. Secondly, I'm not going to sit here and textually suck him off (or slate him). I am, however, going to talk about his music, what it means to me, and what I think its broader implications may be. While eating breakfast (that's how I roll).

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have an inkling that I'm a fan. It took a while. I'd been hearing people rave about him for about a year before I listened to any of his work, and I must admit I was at first thoroughly indifferent to it. I'd heard Burial was this Dubstep wunderkind, but when I first heard his work it sounded like borderline Emo UK Garage. I stuck with the likes of Skream and Digital Mystikz a while longer. Fast forward to 2008 and the Mercury Music Prize nominations. His nomination brought him to wider public knowledge and renewed efforts to unmask the man, with tabloid newspapers coming up with wild theories as to his true identity. Add to that Hot Chip's Joe Goddard, who intimated to Time Out London (2006) that Burial had been a year above him at school. This piqued my interest, as I went to the same school (I was about four or five years behind Alexis and Joe). So I went back and listened to some more of his work (indeed, everything he'd done up to that point), and was enthralled.



After listening to Burial's work for over a year, and reading various interviews he's done with The Wire, The Guardian, or fellow Dubstep artist Blackdown, I realised that this was a guy who was musically saying some of the same things I've been ranting at my friends about: the music now is often too watered down by seeking popularity and sales; the younger ravers coming to the music have little or no clue where this whole phenomenon came from and don't care; we need a return to Old Skool vibes and energy, and less of the Weekend Warrior lifestyle raving. Of course, when I was ranting my friends' ears off, it was about Drum & Bass, but seeing as we're all hanging from different branches of the same tree, it doesn't matter much. Truth is truth, and I'm right because I'm right.
What strikes me about Burial's music isn't that it's new - his sound is distinctly riven with echoes of mid-nineties UK Garage (which I fucking hated at the time!) - but the purity of the Acid House ethic in his music. This isn't a man wasting time polishing the mixdown at the expense of ideas, arrangement, energy and vibes; he's getting his feelings out quickly, succinctly. The vocals, drums, basslines, keys and strings go for the gut. While not immediately dancefloor material, the tunes capture freeze-frames of sweaty South London clubs, urban panoramas (picture the Southern Trains route from Brighton to Victoria via East Croydon and Clapham Junction), solitude, and typically British "downcast optimism".





But beyond that, it captures where Rave got lost. That's a lot to lay at Burial's door, so I'll broaden it a little. Along with the likes of Mala, Loefah, Kode9, Skream, Instra:Mental, dBridge, Alix Perez, Equinox, Blackdown, and Cooly G, Burial's music fits into an emerging strand of artists who just plain ain't havin' it. Having grown weary of superclub chic, anthem bashing and quantity-over-quality, these artists have started making what I term Big People's Music. Music for the over-25 raver (I'm aware, before anyone mentions it, that Alix Perez is himself barely over 25, and Skream is 25 or younger) disillusioned with small venue closures and the ever-growing dearth of superclubs, 45 minute DJ sets, hearing the same five tunes cained by every other DJ every weekend, being surrounded by gormless 18 year olds without a clue about or care for the music and its origins. These artists are experimenting, stripping their music back to a pre-2003 vibes-orientated sound, cross-pollinating Dubstep, Drum & Bass, Afrobeat, true Electro and early House to produce electronic Soul music. Forget the high-passed Amens and predictable R&B vocals of Hospital Records. I'm talking about a revolution in music as big as the emergence of UK Soul in the early nineties. Labels like Hyperdub, nonPlus, Hot Flush, Scientific Wax, Darkestral, and Exit are pushing something as meaningful and paradigm-shattering as the very emergence of Dance music itself. However,with only the high-brow music media, bloggers and a handful of club and radio DJs giving it exposure, it's settling in for a long fight. Or at least, that's my perception.

So where do I see this all going, and what does it mean to me?



Take this tune for example, "Rendezvous" by dBridge. The sound he's working on at the moment, along with Instra:Mental and other artists on their nonPlus imprint is, to me, symbolic of the positive change within the Drum & Bass blueprint in the wake of Dubstep. Where many are trying to ignore Dubstep or simply emulate its halftime beat patterns, the sound of Club Autonomic is the synthesis of a new Soul sound, driven by Drum & Bass and Dubstep. The beat patterns may be different, but the spirit remains. This music is on a frontier, halfway over the edge and pressing on regardless; its glances backward aren't retro so much as informative and educational. And I fucking love it.
I love it because this is what I've been thinking about while the bovine masses of the D&B scene whine and complain like infants that Dubstep is "too slow" or "boring". These tunes won't get rewound three times by Andy C at whatever superclub. These tunes are for a more mature, more thoughtful, more music-loving crowd. I'm not saying that they won't appeal to Andy - they probably do - but his typical fan these days craves a different sound than this. However, don't take this to mean I have no love whatsoever for more typical/tearout D&B - I do - but the times, they are a-changin'. For me, as long as there are artists in that Big People's Music bracket, artists always looking for that next evolution (even if it's a dead-end), there is hope for electronic music.

Burial didn't do it all by himself, but he and many others are symbolic of the shift in what the discerning, older electronic music fan wants. We want to be moved, shocked, surprised, awed by music. We want to be so damn excited about it that we feel like the first time we went raving, the first time we heard this sound. We want to feel incapable of shutting the fuck up about this music, because it matters so much, means so much.

[I like that last bit. "It means so much." Because it really, truely does.]

Jesus

I'll have completed 28 trips around the sun in a few hours. Ugh.

I don't feel like a 28 year old, and my life is a mess. Frak.

Pussies never get any

It's time I manned-up and stopped pining for someone I'm never going to get back together with.

I just have to not fuck up the next time I meet a decent woman. Seems tough from my PoV, but at the same time, lots of less intelligent people seem to do it every day. It can't be that difficult (and this is where I will later return to bemoan my falling victim to hubris).

Slump

No, nothing will ever happen with Laila again.

Stupid self-confidence. I told myself it would be fine, however things played out. The fact is, I'm depressed at the thought that she may very well have been the one, and I lost her because of my immaturity and desire to have more than I could actually manage.

OK, so maybe I do elevate her on a pedestal, but I find her to be a truely singular being. Maybe it's right that one should never seek to revisit the past.

I doubt Miss Right will just walk into my life, but I don't believe I really deserve happiness. Not if all I ever do is destroy it so utterly, so perfectly, because I'm just a little boy in a big man's suit.

So, the Rod Stewart Method it is, then.

Fuck.

Love life ramble/rant

I'm asking myself a lot of questions lately. About my health, about the recent changes in my life (I moved to Germany, became single again, found myself enjoying my new job and location, decided to stay), about the changes that led me here, to being 27, single, just striking out on my own in a new country. I am also asking myself questions about love, the past, and the future.

My brother (40) is married and due to become a father. He and his wife met at uni, were together for over a decade, and finally tied the knot a couple of years ago.
My sister (23) is seeing an absolutely brilliant guy.
Me? I make relationships go *phut* by merely being proximate to them. Well, that's how it feels. Let's have a postmortem...

OK, first up is Kerry. We met one night in a London bar, both fairly drunk. I said she looked like trouble, she took a shine to me, we almost went back to hers that very first night. Instead we went on a date that weekend and started seeing each other weekly from thereon out. I was late. A lot.
I think the stumbling block for our relationship was a combination of her living over an hour away by public transport, and me living with my mother. My mother is a lovely person, but the combination of her and my relationships has often proved catastrophic. Not that it was ever all her. Also, I did do some fucking stupid things, like not calling to let her know I'd be an hour late getting to her house for whatever reason.
Kerry broke up with me after I moved to Munich. Can't say I blame her.

Next up is Kisha. Oh Jesus. We met online via a dating site. The best thing about Kisha was that she was a rampant fuck machine. The worst thing about Kisha was that she was a rampant fuck machine. She lived near Philadelphia. This was realistically never going to work without someon relocating 3,000 miles across the Atlantic away from family, friends and all things familiar.
I dumped her, effectively for not having a passport or a better job than scooping frozen yoghurt at TCBY (OK, so she was a manager, but that was still effectively scooping fro-yo and then hearding the other scoopers). I think she half deserved it, for reasons I shan't divulge.

And now, the main event... *drumroll* Laila. We met online (before Kisha. There's a chronology here) via the same dating site I would later meet Kisha on. This is the relationship of relationships, people. We're talking Troilus and Cressida, Romeo and Juliet, the main kid off The Wonder Years and the total babe he was masturbating over... Errr... Strike that last.
Everything about Laila was perfect for me, and I nearly torpedoed the whole thing on our first date. She lives in a different part of Germany than I moved to, so I travelled over from London (the lead-up to this also almost put paid to this relationship. Partially financial hitches of being a student, partially maternal meddling) on the coach (comedy of errors when I missed my stop and had to take the train back). Skip to after we've made love for the first time (I can still remember the key sensations of making love with her), and she asks me a question, to which I answered "yes". I won't go into it any further than that, but let's just say I'm a fucking clod and incredibly lucky she didn't dump me right then and there. In fact, there are several points in our relationship where you could say the same thing. I shan't pick them over. However, the key facts are these: Laila has never been topped by any other girlfriend. Even the things about her I didn't like or agree with were special to me.
I hope this means it was true love, and not infatuation. Especially not since I can't get her out of my mind. Especially not since I saw her again recently, and what I thought I might feel a little bit of ended up surging, swelling and bursting the flood barriers.

I just hope she feels enough of the same to give me another chance. I'd like to think I'm a better person now than I was then (not that I was bad, but I was certainly rough-hewn and unfinished).

Holding on for a Hero

I heard this week (albeit a tad late) about the forthcoming Android phone, the HTC Hero. Basically, it looks like HTC are going in for the kill with an iPhone-alike, and they might just do it!

This new phone is not only all-touch with no physical keyboard and a similar form-factor to the Apple Fashion Accessory, it supports Flash and has a somewhat controversial new UI called Sense.

However, what has impressed me the most about it is that it will be coming to Orange as of July 2009. Sweet! I can get an Android smartphone without switching networks (hopefully).

On Twitter, a fellow tweeter was somewhat dismayed at the phone's chinrest. Yes, it is a bit odd, but I think it can be lived with.

Anyway, here's a video of Hero's Sense UI in action:



I know, glossy sales pitch video, but I'm pretty much sold already.

I am, however, a little concerned over Android's lack of support for running apps from memory card. I know it can be hacked, but why isn't that a standard piece of functionality?

This is for the thick chicks

Another Def Poetry Jam video, this time it's Ms Tamara Blue with an ode to thick women. I love this happy find, and it wasn't too badly received on Fat Forums either. That's right, I love me some fat chick. Complaints can be submitted by your lips to my arse.