The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Burial · produced by Burial · Hyperdub · about 50 minutes
Mode
Electronic music of the London night turned inward: 2-step swing without the drop, pitched and cut voices, rain and crackle
Mythos
The shade revisiting the place of its happiness; the rave as a lost paradise, its singers and its dance made ghosts
Phase
Thirteen tracks as a walk at night; five short pieces where the beat falls away, never two together; the title track at the centre and the rave reached last
Presentation
Album; thirteen tracks, about fifty minutes, by a producer then anonymous, on an underground label
Register
Swung, skipping drums and a few recurring chords; voices pitched up or down and cut mid-line; vinyl crackle, rain, distant sirens
Scale
One walker and one city at night, and a crowd that is no longer there
Governing Proposition
A producer then anonymous takes the rhythms and voices of the London night, swing without the drop, R&B singers pitched and cut until they are no one’s, and lays rain and crackle over them, so that a pleasure once held in common is heard only as private memory, on a walk home alone through a city at night.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on forty-five seconds with no rhythm in them, before anything has begun. It is the shortest track on the record and the first statement of its method. The music this record comes from was made for the club and the sound system, and the first thing it does is stand outside. When the beat arrives, on the next track, it arrives as something remembered, not as something happening.
Untrue was issued by Hyperdub in November 2007, the second album of Burial, the name under which William Bevan, then anonymous, made his records. It holds thirteen tracks in one sequence, about fifty minutes, produced by Burial alone. The tracks run Untitled, Archangel, Near Dark, Ghost Hardware, Endorphin, Etched Headplate, In McDonalds, Untrue, Shell of Light, Dog Shelter, Homeless, UK and Raver. No edition differs in a way that bears on what the record is.
Eight tracks carry beats. Five are short pieces in which the beat falls away and leaves rain, crackle and voice: Untitled, Endorphin, In McDonalds, Dog Shelter and UK, together about a fifth of the record’s time. They are spread through the sequence and never placed two together, so that every second or third track the rhythm drops out. The title track stands at the centre. The record closes on Raver, the track nearest the dance floor, and so it ends where its memories began.
Movement II
The second track is the record’s clearest statement and, for many listeners, its summit. A voice cut from an R&B song is pitched until it is no one’s, set over a beat that skips and a wash of chords, and it cannot finish its line. Tenderness and loss arrive at once. The longing in the voice has been set loose from the song that gave it an object, and what remains is longing for something no longer named, heard through rain.
What the record discloses can be stated, and it is stated through sound. The collective joy of the rave, of jungle, UK garage and the shared night, survives in the city only as private memory, and a generation walks home alone through the ghosts of a pleasure it once held in common. The voices say it without words. Crackle, rain and distant sirens place it in a city at night. That is a social condition, not only a mood. It is felt more than articulated, and the record shows the loss and not its causes.
The form is the knowledge. Every element is built as a memory: voices cut from their songs and pitched until they belong to no one, beats that recall the swing of the dance and omit its drop, crackle laid over digital sound so that new music arrives already worn. Cleaned and quantised, the same material would be garage, and it would be pleasure. Here it is pleasure remembered. The voices are cut and placed with great exactness, so that a fragment of a syllable carries a whole phrase’s longing.
Movement III
In the middle of the record the beat tracks hold one mode. Near Dark, Ghost Hardware, Shell of Light and Homeless share one tempo, one swung pattern and one palette, and the record holds its state a little longer than it needs to. One of them could go with little lost, though which one is hard to say. Etched Headplate, longer and graver, rises slowly; Shell of Light lifts on a voice that circles without arriving. These are known here by their mode more than their detail, and nothing beyond that mode is claimed for them.
The making is narrow and it is load-bearing. The swing of the drums is the record’s pulse, and rain, crackle and chord are layered into one atmosphere in which each element stays audible. The limits are real and fall on a share of the record: the drums are loose and sometimes clumsy in their placing, partly by design and partly not; the low end is muddy in places; the harmonies are a few chords recurring; and the middle tracks are made to one template. The command is in the voices and the atmosphere, not in range.
The tradition is the music of the London night. Jungle and UK garage gave the record its 2-step swing; the young dubstep of the mid-2000s gave it weight and the drop, made for the sound system. The record sets the drop and the function aside, for patterns that skip and never land, a surface of hiss, and music for one listener after the club, and it brings the voices of commercial R&B into an underground music to mourn. The stake was small, for a producer with no name on an underground label, and the turn had been taken a year before, on Burial (2006). This record carries it toward the voice and makes it whole.
Movement IV
The title track stands at the centre of the record and is its longest. It rises by layering, voice over voice, until the voices seem to come from several distances at once, near and far in the same moment, as memory places them. It is the record’s second height, and like the first it is warm, a grief more than a terror. Around it the short pieces mark places on the walk: a fast-food room in In McDonalds, a dog’s shelter, a homeless figure, the country named in UK.
The titles summon an afterlife. An archangel, ghosts, a shell of light, the dark, the homeless and a shelter: the city they name is a place of spirits. The rave is held as a lost paradise, and the listener walks through its ruins at night, in the old pattern of the shade revisiting the place of its happiness. In one respect the myth is built rather than named, because the treatment itself makes the voices shades of singers and the beats ghosts of the dance.
No figure carries the pattern, and no passage across the sequence enacts it. The record rests in its condition rather than moving through it, and its angels remain titles. What it holds is a consciousness in solitude and memory, and a city, London at night, held more fully than on most records, with the crowd present as an absence and a musical culture’s past as its subject. The family, labour, the state and the natural order beyond the rain do not enter. It is a little more than one self and a good deal less than a world.
Movement V
The record closes on the track nearest the dance floor. Raver carries the exhilaration of the club for the first time at its own tempo, and holds it at a distance, as something reached at the end of the walk and not entered. The record that opened on forty-five seconds without a beat ends in the rave it has been remembering. One law governs the whole: the rave remembered alone, its voices and rhythms turned into ghosts by the city at night. Untitled and Raver, the two most distant tracks, are the same memory at two distances, the street and the club.
Nothing on the record breaks that law. Archangel’s tenderness and Homeless’s bleakness are one longing in two moods, and the short pieces obey as places on the walk. What the law covers is narrow: one palette, one tempo for the beat tracks, one mood. The law is kept perfectly over a narrow field, and narrowness is not coherence. The sequence holds a state more than it turns, and that is the record’s chosen shape and its limit together.
Nineteen years have passed. The recording survives as issued and in print, and its presence has grown: it is placed high whenever its decade is counted and heard whole by more listeners than most underground records find, though no track has passed into common circulation. Made to sound worn, it has little surface left to date. It showed that the rhythms and voices of club music could be turned inward without losing their swing. It is commonly credited with turning the producers who came after dubstep toward atmosphere and the pitched voice, a credit claimed more than measured and shared with the first album and a scene of many hands.
Act III · The Twelve
Thirteen tracks in about fifty minutes, and the subtractive test splits. The short pieces where the beat falls away look removable and mostly are not: they are the spaces between the rhythms, the street between two clubs, and the record’s argument needs the beat to fall away as often as it does. Archangel must come early, as the clearest statement; Untrue must stand at the centre; Raver must close, the rave remembered at last at its own tempo. The test bites in the beat tracks. Near Dark, Ghost Hardware, Shell of Light and Homeless share one tempo, one swung pattern and one palette, and one of them could go with little lost; which one is hard to say, and that is the finding.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it is stated through sound: the collective joy of the rave, of jungle, UK garage and the shared night, survives in the city only as private memory, and a generation walks home alone through the ghosts of a pleasure it once held in common. The voices say it without words, R&B singers pitched up or down and cut so they cannot finish a line, longing set loose from the songs that gave it an object. Crackle, rain and distant sirens place it in a city at night. That is a social condition, not only a mood, and it holds. What keeps it below the bar is that it is felt more than articulated, and the record shows its loss, not its causes.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Elevation comes often and is of one temperature, the transport of longing. Archangel is the summit: a cut and pitched voice over a skipping beat and a wash of chords, tenderness and loss at once. Untrue, at the centre, rises by layering until the voices seem to come from several distances at once. Etched Headplate holds a long, grave rise; Shell of Light lifts on a voice that circles without arriving; Raver closes with the nearest the record comes to the dance floor’s exhilaration, held at a distance. The short pieces give a lower, colder height of rain and crackle. Height comes on six or seven of thirteen tracks, all of it warm grief, never terror or grandeur.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Myth is evoked strongly and built only in part. The titles summon an afterlife: an archangel, ghosts, a shell of light, the dark, the homeless and a dog’s shelter, and the city they name is a place of spirits. The rave is held as a lost paradise, and the listener walks its ruins at night, the old pattern of the shade revisiting the place of its happiness. In one respect it is nearer to built: the treatment itself makes the voices shades of singers and the beats ghosts of the dance. What holds the axis lowest of the eleven is that no figure carries the pattern and no passage across the sequence enacts it; the record rests in the condition, and its angels are titles.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The inheritance is the music of the London night: jungle, UK garage and its 2-step rhythm, and the young dubstep of the mid-2000s, whose weight and drops were made for the sound system; behind them, the ambient records of the 1990s. The turn is large. Dubstep’s bass and function are put aside for swung patterns that skip and never drop, the clean digital surface for crackle and hiss, the dance track for music heard alone after the club, and the voices of commercial R&B are taken into an underground music and made to mourn. What holds the axis is stake and date: an anonymous producer on an underground label had little to risk, and the turn was first taken on Burial (2006).
Score: 8.3 / 10
Change the form and the record stops knowing what it knows, because the knowledge is in the treatment. A record about joy surviving only as memory is built so that every element is a memory: voices cut from their songs and pitched until they are no longer anyone’s; beats that recall the dance’s swing and omit its drop; crackle laid over digital sound, so that new music arrives already worn. Cleaned and quantised, the same material would be garage, and pleasure; here it is pleasure remembered. The sequence is counted here, once: the short pieces between the rhythms make the record a walk. The middle tracks share one form, and the sequence holds a state more than it turns.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Nineteen years is a short span, and on this axis it forecasts more than it demonstrates. What it shows is more than the span would suggest: the record has become a central text for writing on music and memory, returned to by critics as well as listeners. The yield in the recording is formal and real. Buried voices surface on return, and the layers of rain, crackle and chord separate under close listening, so that a record of one mood keeps showing how it was made. The semantic return is thinner. The voices have no sentences, and much of what a listener finds in them is projection invited by fragments.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The field is British electronic and dance music of the 2000s, and the place of the dance record in listening. The intrinsic force is high: the record showed that the rhythms and voices of club music could be turned inward, into music of solitude and memory, without losing their swing, and that a dance producer’s album could be a work heard whole. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record is commonly credited with turning producers after dubstep toward atmosphere, the pitched voice and the skipping beat, and with shaping the haunted strain of British electronic music since; the credit is claimed more than measured, and it is shared with the first album, the label and a scene of many hands.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Survival is weighed over nineteen years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued, in print on vinyl and CD and in streaming. Presence is continuous and has grown since release: the record is placed high whenever its decade is counted and heard whole by a wide listenership for an underground record, but its presence is far narrower than a popular album’s, and no track has passed into common circulation. The fabric is the interesting case. Made to sound worn, the record has little surface left to date, though its 2-step rhythms and R&B voices are of their years and are heard as such.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The making is load-bearing where it counts. The voices are cut, pitched and placed with great exactness, so that a fragment of a syllable carries a whole phrase’s longing; the swing of the drums is the record’s pulse; rain, crackle and chord are layered into one atmosphere that keeps each element audible. The means are narrow, and what is scored is the command of them. The limits fall on a real share. The drums are loose and sometimes clumsy in their placing, part design and part limitation; the low end is muddy in places; the harmonic palette is a few chords recurring; and the middle tracks are made to one template.
Score: 8.2 / 10
One law governs the record: the rave remembered alone, its voices and rhythms turned into ghosts by the city at night. The two most distant elements obey it. Untitled, forty-five seconds without a beat, and Raver, the nearest the record comes to the dance floor, are the same memory at two distances, the street and the club, and the record passes from one to the other. In McDonalds and UK, short pieces of atmosphere, obey as places on the walk; Archangel’s tenderness and Homeless’s bleakness are one longing in two moods. Nothing breaks the law. What holds the figure is range: one palette, one tempo for the beat tracks, one mood. Narrowness is not coherence.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held, as solitude, longing and memory. The city is held more fully than on most records: London at night, rain, a fast-food room, sirens, a homeless figure, a dog’s shelter, places named and heard. The crowd is held as an absence, the collective the rave once made. Love is present as the longing of the cut voices, and history in one sense, a musical culture’s past as the record’s subject. The family, labour, the state, the sacred beyond the titles’ angels and the natural order beyond the rain are absent. What holds the figure lowest is that it is a little more than one self and a good deal less than a world.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.1 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form at 8.6 and The Sublime at 8.5, then The Swerve, Pressure on Tradition and The Imperishable at 8.3. A form in which every element is built as a memory and the sequence is a walk; height on six or seven of thirteen tracks, all of it warm grief; a turn from dubstep’s weight and function to music for one listener after the club; a force that turned the rhythms and voices of the dance inward; and a record made to sound worn, with little surface left to date.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.8: a consciousness in solitude and memory and a city at night held fully, the crowd as an absence and a musical culture’s past as subject, and the family, labour, the state and the natural order absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 7.7: the shade revisiting the place of its happiness, built into the treatment of the voices and borne by no figure. Then The Inevitable at 8.0: one interchangeable track in the middle and a mode held a little long.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.0 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.6, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Swerve at 8.3, Pressure on Tradition at 8.3, The Imperishable at 8.3, The Unconcealment at 8.1 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.7 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.7, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.8. Four of the five summit conditions are met; the summit is withheld on the Epochal Gate, and the aggregate, at 8.1, stands below it as well.
Basis · the album as released by Hyperdub in November 2007, thirteen tracks in one sequence, about fifty minutes, produced by Burial; judged from knowledge of the recording and its reception, knowing the main tracks closely and the short pieces and some of the middle tracks as mode more than as detail, so that nothing is asserted of those tracks beyond their mode. No recording was in hand. The album is the unit; editions are not distinguished, and the first album, Burial (2006), is named only as the place where the turn was first taken. Tracks are cited by title; the voices are mostly wordless or fragmentary, and nothing is quoted. Track lengths are given only roughly. Facts that could not be verified, among them the exact date of release, the means and software with which the record was made, the records from which its voices were taken, the writers who have argued through it, its prize history and the names of the producers it is credited with turning, are not given, and its reach is stated as commonly credited.