Untrue (album)

Background and production

Following the release of his 2006 self-titled debut album, Burial began work on a second studio album. He had felt some pressure to follow up Burial, and worked several hours a day creating new songs and learning how to use new sound-editing programs. The musician produced various songs which he described as "darker" and "more technical", but ultimately scrapped the material because he grew tired of them from the long hours he spent on their production. Burial then decided to take a new direction in producing the album; instead of spending long periods of time working on individual songs, he sought to "make a glowing, buzzing album, do it really fast; to cheer [himself] up." He also desired to capture the essence of his musical preferences—aiming to make tracks based on what UK hardcore music meant to him—while at the same time incorporating "a dose of real life... something people can relate to."

Speaking of the album's recording process, Burial stated: "I would sit around waiting for night to fall, wait for summer to end. Or I would go out, wait for it to get dark, and then I'd go back and work on it, sort of hypnotise myself." By his own account, many of the songs on Untrue were produced "in the dead of the night." In addition, Burial was also keen on adding vocals to the songs on Untrue; in the absence of a proper session vocalist, he instead had friends sing over the phone and utilised samples of acapellas, editing individual words to form sentences. Burial produced the entirety of the album with the digital audio editor Sound Forge.

Composition

Untrue, categorised as a dubstep album and described as a tribute to UK garage, retains several musical elements which marked the sound of Burial, including heavy use of sampling and Burial's trademark skipped drum patterns. In contrast to Burial's past work, however, Untrue more prominently features pitch-shifted and time-stretched vocals in its tracks. Burial's sampling has been described as "a careful mix of pitch-shifting vocoders and delay/echo effects." Throughout the album's run time, the use of beats is varied; Jon Jolley, writing for Tiny Mix Tapes, writes that throughout the album's run time "the beat is [brought] to the front, [dragged] to the back, and sometimes eliminated completely." Tracks such as "Archangel" and "Near Dark" feature uptempo, skittering beats, while tracks on the "verging-on-beatless" middle section of the album, including the ambient interludes "Endorphin" and "In McDonalds", place emphasis on isolated vocal samples overlaid on ambience. The downbeat "Shell of Light" incorporates piano, string instruments, and rain sound effects. The mix of vocals and skipped drum patterns on Untrue has been called reminiscent of 2-step garage and early jungle music.

Dan Hancox of The Guardian noted that while Untrue is "still distinctly DIY, some of the melancholy of Burial's debut has dissipated on this new album, which is more heavily loaded with garage-inflected vocals, and more upbeat as a consequence." Dave Stelfox of The Village Voice expressed a similar sentiment, noting a "shift from dystopian melancholy to restrained optimism." Critics have noted that the increased emphasis on vocal effects on Untrue over his previous works contributes to its more emotional nature. Pitchfork critic Philip Sherburne wrote that Untrue is "not a pop album, at least not by Top 40 standards, but his voices—male, female, and ambiguous—wriggle deep into the listener's consciousness." Burial's vocal sampling utilizes pitch-shifting in order to make male vocals sound feminine and female vocals sound masculine, resulting in the album's vocals taking on a more androgynous nature. In addition, references to angels and supernatural phenomena recur in several of the album's vocal samples and track titles, including "Archangel" and "Ghost Hardware", and Burial has stated that these were intended to connect to people "maybe taking a battering in their life, but [who] still handle themselves with grace". He added: "When you think of some of the things people go through, everyday troubles, relationship things, other stuff. Everyone knows those sorts of feelings. I wanted to do songs about that low-key stuff."

Release

On 17 October 2007, Scottish musician and Hyperdub label owner Kode9 appeared as a guest on the BBC programme Radio 1's Experimental Show, where he played several tracks from Untrue. Following much anticipation, Untrue was released by Hyperdub on 5 November 2007. It was released as thirteen-track Digipak CD and a nine-track double vinyl LP on which some beatless pieces were edited out. Untrue debuted at number 121 on the UK Albums Chart for the week ending 17 November 2007. In the Belgian region of Flanders, Untrue spent one week at number 57 on the Ultratop 50 albums chart. On the Ultratop Alternative Albums chart, it debuted at number 23 and remained on the chart for eight weeks.

Hyperdub issued "Archangel" as the album's first single, and it peaked at number 21 on the Flanders Ultratip singles chart. "Ghost Hardware", which had previously been released on the Burial EP of the same name in June 2007, was made available for free download in the United Kingdom as the iTunes Store single of the week on 10 December 2007. Untrue was later nominated for the Mercury Prize and experienced a 1004% sales increase in the week following the awards ceremony, allowing it to re-enter the UK Albums Chart and reach a new peak of number 58. The critical and commercial success of Untrue prompted Burial, whose identity until then had been anonymous, to disclose his real name—William Bevan—and give out interviews to the media.

Critical reception

Untrue was widely acclaimed by contemporary critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album has received an average score of 90, based on 23 reviews. Chris Mann of Resident Advisor wrote that Untrue "lays another strong claim to Burial being the most innovative and expressive artist not only in dubstep, but in the whole of electronic music." Jason Birchmeier of AllMusic praised Untrue as being "arguably even better than its predecessor" and called it an album "where the music... takes center stage with no distractions or sideshows, where there's never the urge to skip to the next track, because they're all part and parcel of the greater whole." Writing for MSN Music, Robert Christgau described the album as "emotional, which helps its funk a lot, and eventful, which helps its interest even more", comparing Burial's "sonic imagination" to that of English musician Tricky. "The moniker [Burial] and, apparently, the worldview, are dark, as the kids say", Christgau wrote. "But when the mix is as rich as this, dark goes to a better place." The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey believed Untrue "confirms that Burial possesses not just the keen ear of a Lee Perry or Martin Hannett... but a capacious heart."

Tom King of Drowned in Sound branded Untrue as an improvement over Burial's debut, writing: "What gives this album more depth is the focus, the rolling symmetry and cinema." Joe Gross of Spin wrote that with the album, Burial "deepens and expands his emotional range". PopMatters critic Tal Rosenberg felt that the "seamlessness" of Untrue distinguished it from his past work and advised listeners not to approach the album "as a dubstep record, but as a record, period." Dave Hughes from Slant Magazine deemed Untrue "ambient music concealing its cracked modern heart with a stiff upper lip", recommending it should be listened to at a high volume. In Pitchfork, Philip Sherburne praised Burial's use of vocal samples and wrote that the album managed to retain the style and overall vibe of Burial and improve over it, describing it as a "deeper album—richer, more complex, more enveloping." Uncut published a more lukewarm review of Untrue, characterizing it as "altogether warmer than its predecessor."

Accolades

Untrue appeared on numerous critics' year-end and decade-end top albums lists. Based on aggregated review scores, Untrue is ranked the most acclaimed album of 2007—tied with Swedish electronic music producer The Field's From Here We Go Sublime—by the review aggregate site Metacritic. Sputnikmusic named it the best album of the year, while it was ranked at number two by The Wire. Untrue also placed within the top ten of year-end best album lists by The Observer, Pitchfork, and Tiny Mix Tapes. It placed at number 27 on The Village Voice's year-end Pazz & Jop critics' poll. In his Pazz & Jop ballot, Robert Christgau ranked it the tenth best album of the year. The album was nominated for a Mercury Prize in 2008, losing to Elbow's The Seldom Seen Kid. It was also nominated for the 2007 Shortlist Music Prize, which was eventually awarded to Feist's The Reminder.

Fact named Untrue the best album of the 2000s and stated that Burial "stripped UK garage of its twitchy micro-textures and created a fabulous new strain of future soul." Resident Advisor listed it as the third best album of the decade, with reviewer Derek Miller calling it "a mastery of sample stitching". Several other publications, including Pitchfork, Slant Magazine, and Stylus Magazine, included Untrue in their decade-end lists of best albums. NPR named the album one of the 50 Most Important Recordings of the Decade, while The A.V. Club put it on their list of the best electronic albums of the decade. Rolling Stone placed Untrue at number eleven on their list of the greatest EDM albums of all-time, while Q listed it as one of three essential dubstep releases.

Track listing

All tracks written and produced by Burial.