burial

It’s a hit-or-miss situation when an artist is hyper-aware of their lineage. Far too often they spend too much time paying homage or psyching themselves out trying not to pay homage to the things that they love. It’s a rare case when someone can take from the past and build it into something new. One of the few genres doing that nowadays in the dance music world is dubstep. And one of the best artists working in the genre is Burial.

Dubstep emerged in the UK around the same time as grime and there are many similarities between the two. Both have their origins in the 2-step, garage and drum-n-bass scenes that came before them, relying on enormous woofer-busting basslines and syncopated drum patterns. But whereas grime productions generally leaned a bit poppier and are mostly avenues for MCs to rap over, dubstep is largely instrumental (with a notable exception or two).

As Martin Clark talks about in his eMusic review of Burial, the man behind the project (his real identity isn’t known):

sat in his bedroom dreaming. He dreamt of jungle’s embers and UK garage’s heyday and mourned their passing. To console himself, he took the most rudimentary of studio equipment — a simple audio editor — and poured his heart into it. The intricate rhythmic and textural results became Burial’s eponymous debut album.

A few weeks ago we got in Burial’s latest slab, Ghost Hardware and somehow it completely slipped my mind to mention it here. It continues the intensely claustrophobic, gritty sound that you can find on the self-titled. (One of the things that makes Burial stand out from his contemporaries is how he layers a bit of crackling over everything, evoking both vinyl and decay at the same time.)

If you’re worried about your downloads and don’t know anything about him, I’d suggest starting with “Wounder” and “Distant Lights” from Burial and “Exit Woundz” from Ghost Hardware.