I offered up a few tracks from Burial last week, and have since found Burial's Untrue CD (great review from Pitchfork, and Metacritic shows it as the best reviewed album of '07). It's amazing. I don't quite know how to characterize the music. Pitchfork writes...
Untrue is a homage to UK garage, or two-step-- a short-lived, oft-mourned fusion of breakbeats and house music that peaked in the late 90s before morphing into offshoots dubstep, grime, and bassline house.
Whatever. It's just outstanding, deep & thoughtful urban beats...
Top-heavy with sad string passages and mournful vocal loops, Untrue is an album meant to be heard at home, in the car, on headphones-- his songs feel almost like beautiful secrets being whispered to a listener.
It haunting. It won't suit the tastes of some of my readers, but I don't care because I can't stay silent. Read interviews with the anonymous (yes, anonymous) artist known as Burial: Hyperdub, Fact Magazine, Blackdown.
In other news, I ignored the buzz on Feist's The Reminder last year, to my detriment. It's wonderful and beautiful pop music that would have easily maee my "best of" list from 2007. It's accessible and worth checking out on MySpace.
Here's the flawless "1 2 3 4"...
I also watched the Scorsese documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home, a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it. I'm growing into a real Dylan fan.