It’s the last track of the night and the DJ is winding down his set. The crowd starts to leave the room as the volume comes down on the music and the last few standing cheer or ask for one more tune holding their bags and coats. The club empties. The static you hear from the speakers and subs, the ringing in your ears and the remnants of all the music that once came out of those speakers still bounce off the walls. You leave the club and jump on the night bus, watching London in all its grey yet colourful glory. Burial for me is that resonance, the remnants of a night’s past, the static that leaves the speakers and the noise that fills your head once the night is over.

Burial from the first moment I discovered his music has always had some sort of impact on the way I listen to music and also my view of London. I first discovered him when his remix of Bloc Party’s “Where Is Home” appeared on their Flux LP, to then later appear on a dubstep compilation for the Ministry of Sound. At first, the sound confused me. I would often show friends the track knowing it had garage influences but I still couldn’t place it (bear in mind I was a 13/14-year-old teen).

I was heavy on my dubstep and liked the sound. It was slower and I found it a lot easier to listen to than a lot of the indie rock and pop that was coming out at that time. However, Burial ignited a new flame in my musical interests. After having discovered his Bloc Party remix, I spent a whole weekend listening to his first LP. Staring out of my bedroom window as the sun sets over Bromley and the rest of South East London. That was the moment I understood Burial’s music. To and from college, I’d listen to his first LP and Untrue from start to end – engaging with the music with every step as I pace through the dark wintery nights on my way home.

As a music producer, I would always take note of how artists from the garage and dubstep scenes used swing in their tracks. As mentioned by Burial in his interview with Blackdown in 2006, he referred to garage as “rollage”, with ever-evolving crunchy drums never fitting into any sequence, just a gritty “pirate sound”. With every minor personal tweak of a track, this is where the magic of rollage comes in. It’s not all about sticking to a grid, it’s more about the vibe. Burial for me highlighted with his use of Sound Forge and what seems like an extensive library of samples that would put my library to shame, that you didn’t need to follow any sort of formula. It’s always been hard for me to move off the grids in Ableton and build a track solely with my ears but the magic extends beyond that, it’s more about making your tracks personal and staying true to your own style. With every track you listen to, from the lowkey slinky grooves in Burial’s “Archangel” and “Untrue” with their R&B samples from Ray J and Beyonce through to “Shell of Light” and “Dog Shelter”, you discover rave’s past and the underground elements of London that get looked over all too often. I may not have been old enough to go to FWD or DMZ, but Burial took me there with his music. He was my access to that world. I could live and see those nights through his music and the white noise coming from early Rinse FM seated perfectly in the background.

In the late Mark Fisher’s Wire interview with Burial, Burial echoes throughout that his influences began as a kid when his brother would play deeper and darker jungle tracks and share jungle and rave tapes. Burial then later responds to the people on the internet that repeatedly tried to put down his use of Sound Forge to make music with the following, “Yeah I wish sometimes that I’d gone to college to learn music production, but other times I’m like ‘no, fuck, I’m happy I didn’t’”. For me the innocence of his entry into music and his message that you can make music in any which way you want instantly resonated with me. In his interviews, he never mentioned racks of hardware, keyboards, samplers or an overpowered PC, it’s just his computer, his ears, and the music. As a 14-year-old confused as to where to even begin with music production, I instantly felt like I could grab my low powered Dell laptop, find a cracked copy of a DAW and get to work.

We celebrated 10 years of Untrue this year, and already we are hitting 2018 with 3 singles from 2017 and what I hope is a lot more exciting music to come. It’s exciting to see the change from what was 2-step influence, through to ambiance and noise, and now what could be techno influences with his recent Nonplus release.

If you’d like to learn a little more about Burial, check out some of the links below:

Resident Advisor – Burial’s Untrue: The making of a masterpiece

Fact Mag – Burial Turns 10

Boiler Room – Burial “Untrue” with Benji B & Blackdown – Contemporary Classics