Burial - Truant / Rough Sleeper

Have you ever had your dance music end up in the same key as some random background noises like a lawn mower or an electric heater?  If this happened at night, in a dumpy part of town, you may already know what it sounds like to listen to Burial.  His work has a very eerie and unexplained quality to it, even though most of it sounds quite beautiful.  It sounds like what you are hearing is being produced by some unknown instrument hiding inside a broken air conditioner rather than a synthesizer or any computer.  Also, All the elements in his music, especially the percussion, are quite stripped down, and the simplicity of it all makes it easy to notice when things warp and change fluidly throughout his songs.

After his 2007 album Untrue, burial has basically stopped producing albums, but is instead producing very forward thinking tracks that are as long as EP`s.  2012`s fantastic Kindred EP only packed three songs, but ran for a total of about 32 minutes.  In this longer format, the tracks have more freedom to meander and explore various pitch shifted vocals and ambient bass noises in a relaxed and very natural way.  Also, since you're not being forced to listen to ten or twelve of these epic tracks together in an album, each one has the opportunity to grip your full attention.

Truant / Rough Sleeper is another step in this exploratory direction, and it is a strong step indeed.  In the Kindred EP the drum samples stayed quite monotonous throughout the different tracks, but in "Truant" they are constantly evolving and changing.  You also hear this Djembe drift in and out of the mix as it being manipulated with all these different filters.  Some other interesting noises you hear in this track are jingling keys, coins dropping, matches burning, and wind chimes, and they all fit together nicely.  The song builds quite slowly, but when it really ramps up around the six minute mark, the effect of the lead synth against the backwards hi-hat, and all these other strange noises is quite beautiful and meditative.

One thing I didn't like very much was the bass sound that comes in around the nine minute mark.  It doesn't stay for very long, but this brief minor turn seems kind of out of place in this otherwise beautifully subtle nocturne.  Because of this substantial emotional change, I would almost rather that the last four minutes were a different song.  I also find that the many times the music stops completely in this song tend to break up the flow too much for a serious groove to ever develop.

"Rough Sleeper" was definitely my favorite of these two tracks.  I feel that the emotion was more consistent all the way through and it has a more fluid progression as well.  The saxophone sample in this song is rusty and haunting, and it fits right in with the many other vocal samples that phase in and out of the music like ghosts.  Later on when the marimba is introduced, the effect is just ethereal.  It fits into the static pops like a glove, and the whole song just sounds like the music is coming from the earth around you rather than your headphones or speakers.  In closing, if an amber lit back alleyway could sing to you, it would sound like Burial.