Uh, Weekly Song? Episode 23 - Burial

A lot of people are feeling alone right now. I’m lucky – I live with my wife and kid in a nice house that sports a decent-sized backyard. I have my own upstairs studio in which to work. Plus, as a natural hermit, staying in hasn’t been a hardship. I’ve also been lucky in that, aside from the corporate work I do, working remotely is pretty much the norm. In the last three weeks, I’ve never been busier.

On the other hand, hearing from so many friends and family as they cope with the isolation and maybe the COVID-19 illness too – at a distance, whether it’s here in the USA, in Europe or elsewhere in the world – has been unnerving. I worry about family and friends with underlying health conditions. I worry about the economic impact this situation will have, and all the political ramifications. It could be a turning point – or a tipping point. It could turn out to have benefits, if a societal pressure is the result; one that is brought to bear on the failure of political leaders to foresee this crisis and protect and bolster health services and imagine a way forward. It’s one of many potential crises, not one manufactured by human politics or primate navel-gazing. It’s not a war, because you can’t fight Mother Nature. To me, it feels like Mama Nature has shot across the bow of the ark of humankind – shape up, or ship out. Next time I’ll hit you even harder, and there’s only one outcome. We sink, she wins. She’ll win every time. So sort it out.

We heard of our first death yesterday – three degrees of separation, in our case – and it had a strange air of inevitability about it. For many, that experience has been much closer to home.

Staying in and self-isolating is relatively easy for some, difficult and terrible for others, especially if they’re cooped up with someone they don’t want to be near. Others are just on their own. Then there are those who have to go to work, risking their own health on the frontline. The vital service workers, the healthcare workers, the drivers and delivery people, those keeping infrastructure everywhere up-and-running. Those keeping us provided with food, with power, water and Internet. This one’s an oblique but heartfelt thanks to you.

This one’s also a shout-out to you if you’re feeling forsaken and detached. YANA. This one’s for you.

I’ve never known how Burial should be classified – whether he’s Drum ‘n’ Bass, Dubstep, 2-step Garage or whatever, but he evolved out of the London rave scene. For a long time, no-one knew who he was. His identity was not a secret exactly, but it didn’t seem important to him to be known. His only real imperative, like any auteur, was to get his vision out there (if music can be referred to that way).

My own comprehension of Burial is that his methodology in making music bears a strong resemblance to that of a painter’s or visual storyteller’s, one with a strong instinct for editing and boiling ingredients down to their absolutes. He builds things, constructs a throughline and strips it down to a skeleton – the bare essentials to make it work. There’s not an ounce of fat on a Burial track, and each one could be characterised as a portrait of sorts. Sometimes they are open, spacious, like the recent State Forest, sometimes they are cloistered, tightly focused, like Truant or Street Halo. They always conjure up vivid moods and imagery, as if they’re soundtracks to films not yet created.

Burial has a way of capturing the atmosphere of south London in sonic form. When I listen to a Burial track, I discern a widescreen, landscape picture of the haunts of my youth – the grit, pollution, dirt and the accents of the Peckham council estate my grandmother lived on, the shape of tower blocks on the skyline, the malty smell of spilled beer on the floors of the pubs, the sun going down in the distant west towards where the planes fly. There is an umber neon glow to south London nights and a million backlit windows there, behind every one of which lies a story.

You can feel alone and disconnected in a city despite being surrounded by people, and this track is a partial antidote to that. The best music is a transformer of mood, a signpost to new directions and possibilities. It’s not really a good indicator of the rest of Burial’s output – it’s almost syrupy in places, but it gives me a sense of all those individual pools of light merging into one; the cityscape as a tapestry and a yet also a character in its own right.

This is Come Down To Us, and if you’re alone, in self-perception if not in actuality, in a city or somewhere rural, I hope it brings you comfort and helps get you through it.

Notes

If you like Come Down To Us, you should check out the rest of Burial’s oeuvre. He recently released a compilation of Tunes 2011 – 2019 that collects many of his longer experimental soundscapes, but both his (revered) albums and any of his 12” singles are worth your time.

His music can be found at these labels: Hyperdub (here’s Hyberdub’s Bandcamp page) and Planet Mu.