Burial: Tunes 2011-2019 | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- There’s always a disconnect in my mind between the kind of scratchy, faded, haunted music that Burial makes and his presence, not just on the scene, but as some kind of anti-superstar to the world at large.  As another reviewer noted, William Bevan who deliberately hid his identity for the first few years of his career, is a producer who, some other years, has comfortably beaten the giants -Adele, One Direction and Bon Iver- on Christmas sales charts. I don’t often review retrospectives, especially not by an artist who clearly, for more than a decade, has been thoroughly ingrained in the cultural psyche -one of the most inescapable figures in electronic music- but there’s something about Burial.

For starters, I suppose, it’s easy to lose track of his discography. After his first two albums, which this collection avoids, Burial’s release method of choice has been a stream of 12”s, -the better to tantalise the ravening fans- that’s on top of even more fragmentary collaborations and one-offs. There’s an argument to be made for joining the dots, observing what is a quite camouflaged artistic development -you mean it doesn’t all sound like two-step that’s been twice dubbed between tape decks?- but one that is undeniable when you really look and listen.

Actually, Burial’s tracking here makes it kind of obvious. He kicks off Tunes with a slab of his recent, ambient works. They’re among the most deeply ominous of his oeuvre and, thanks to the very figurative samples, some of the most evocatively cinematic. It’s very much like you’re watching an alternative take on Annihilation, Bladerunner 2049 or a sprawling, disturbing episode of the latest Twin Peaks. It ain’t UK Garage and you won’t find his latest, darkly poppy take on that -Claustro- till up in the middle of the collection. I mean, it’s here, but Bevan is much more keen for you to notice the great, nearly beatless edifices he’s been spending so much time on. It’s also easy to bemoan the absence of recent, standalone bangers like Rodent or Indoors or any of the numerous, distinctive collaborations he has engaged in. Like it or not, this is Burial’s trip through his back-catalogue and, well, does it surprise anyone that it’s as ruled by his dark, unorthodox whim as any other release in his career?

Also, ‘like’? Come on, you love it. Whatever element of his wide palette you want, it’s here in spades. Sewing it together into a giant, dystopian tapestry does produce some unexpected results, at least for me. For instance, 2013’s Rival Dealer EP -the enigmatic, sample studded and highly symbolic trip through 3AM queer and rave culture- is one of my favourite ever Burial releases. Here it exists as a link between the ambient works and the more dancefloor oriented material. In these long tracts Burial turns sampling into a kind of abstract language, taking the stereotypical and hackneyed affirmations of house and garage “I will always love you!” and transforming them into something profound, made that much more real and joyous when they exist against this dark background of post-industrial England. I believe that it’s these moments where William Bevan is trying to communicate his soul to us. Still, what was especially gripping within the demarcations of a 12” seems to drift here, joining too seamlessly into the great, grey background of a decade’s work.

Maybe there’s a deeper pattern at work which I have yet to decipher; probably, who knows? It’s irrelevant, anyway, as the beats snap back and we finish Burial’s dystopian journey at the place where it was destined to end: in the club, on the dancefloor, burning off life’s weight of misery to a soundtrack of tinny, faded, garage beats.

Over a decade or all at once, both routes are compelling. Hyperdub’s milestone celebrations -like the epic Hyperdub 10 compilations- are all cultural highwater marks. Burial, the artist whose presence dwarfs one of electronic music’s most significant rosters, without really saying anything new at all, delivers the only thing which could top the lot.

- Chris Cobcroft. 
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1368790625/size=large/bgcol=f…; seamless><a href="http://burial.bandcamp.com/album/tunes-2011-to-2019">Tunes 2011 to 2019 by Burial</a></iframe>