The Unknown Power Inside Burial
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Burial, Untrue (Hyperdub)eight out of ten stars I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately. And I probably shouldn’t because, like Laurie Anderson once famously said, talking about music is like dancing about architecture. But still, I’m human, so it’s only natural to wonder why music—great music, I should say—can take such hold. What gives it such unspeakable power? Well I’m not about to contradict myself and begin here an analysis. No dialectic will uncover some spectacular truth. No scientific experiment or chemical response study will tell me. No answers exist, only theory. But I will say experiencing the inexplicable power in an album like Burial’s newest Untrue makes you want to at least wonder. I’m starting to feel great music connects us to another realm. I believe in something else. I’m not sure what. But I believe something exists beyond our physical reality. Be it spirits or quantum physics—there’s got to be something else. And music is, for such statements, the ultimate defense. Music touches us and moves us in ways nothing else can. Beyond triggering an emotion or a memory, music carves a hole to somewhere else. It’s an escape we take a number of times, in a number of ways. I can think of almost nothing else that lets us so simultaneously release and connect—only god (or whatever) knows why. And it is in this extraordinary experience of the unknown, deep in the throngs of great music, that we can’t help but believe. Course not all music holds such power. Only when music achieves a truth that has surpassed the physical, the concrete and the ethical—a truth so true it feels untrue—can it takes us on an exhilarating trip and leave us marveling, How did it do that? At least that seems the case for the power within music made by an anonymous London fellow who records under the name Burial. Technically, Burial’s songs are lo-fi, gritty, static-y, dark and thick with beats—people like to call it dub-step or grime or house or some amalgam thereof. But it’s none of those things that give Burial’s music such power. And besides, a lot of music sounds like that and can be described like that. But not a lot of music is eternally great like Untrue. Burial’s music takes you to another world—or at least has you believing in one. Maybe it’s because he tapped into something unknown. Maybe it’s because something unknown tapped into him. Maybe it’s because his music lets his listeners feel like he wants to feel: Unknown and untrue—is there anything more beautiful? I’m not sure. Music’s not meant for answers—what fun is the world without wonder?
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