Untrue

Best electronic album ever?! Maybe

Untrue by Burial is one of my favorite albums of this century. Fantastic dubstep in soundscape that are almost empty, but still a lot happens. Every sound is something that adds a meaningful element to each song. This album sounds laidback while it's still danceable. One of the essential albums in electronic music.

"Archangel" is the feel-bad song of the summer, every summer (since I started listening to Burial in 2024) My first Burial was his E.P. Antidawn, after some online mag (Pitchfork, maybe) raved about it. Imagine the broken vinyl effects and ghostly vocals without any hook or danceable beat. I really liked it, so it was only a matter of time before I checked out some of his other stuff. It's a good thing I have heard Untrue several times before, since my mood wasn't particularly great this morning. Grey windy weather, a long commute, an over-tired brain who just wouldn't shut off the night before, yadda yadda yadda. Untrue, as miserable and dark it can sound in places, alternately balances it out with catchy rhythms and warm swathes of ambient. Also those 'musique concrete', random clips of people talking is weirdly comforting and adds to its atmosphere. Cons: that tinkly sample of a bullet casing hitting the floor, as heard in several tracks Pros: everything else HL: "Archangel", "Endorphin", "Etched Headplate", "Shell of Light", "Raver"

One of the most evocative albums of all time. I feel like everybody gets transported to the same cold rainy concrete jungle at night while listening to this. Incredible how much can be done with, for lack of a better term, so little. Strong 4/5.

Rating: 10/10

Now, this is the reall dubstep.

This is the sort of trippy, darker electronic music that I associate with an after-hours wind-down after a night out at a club. As such, it isn’t something I would typically put on the stereo but it is a very good example of its genre and worthy of a listen… even if you don’t find yourself wanting that wee-hours-of-the-morning chill out.

Incredible how prescient and influential this LP remains, sounding like it was released in the late teens rather than 2007. The IDM meets club vocals composition yields tracks that feel rich yet isolated, full of emotion in an uncaring void. It’s clear why this album remains so admired and tops most albums of all time lists, another clear miss for the official 1001 even two decades on.

Dubstep, UK garage, ambient. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

This was certainly some cool dub music

It's good electronic music, but my base for good electronic music is so high living in Berlin where I can walk into any tiny club or dance and hear something 10x better than this. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 4/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Excellent dubstep album that made waves back in 2007. The mood is very urban, very minimalistic, very melancholic. Not "Near Dark", as one track title will have you believe, but VERY dark indeed. "Archangel" is a killer opener, its extraordinary ever-shifting drum pattern displaying a kaleidoscopic backdrop for fascinating vocal snippets. And the couple of tracks after this opener doubles down on the latter's intents and hammers the point home: with music like this, you will dance until the end of the night under the neon lights -- outside, in desolate streets, your heartache fuelling the tireless moves of your legs and arms... Of course the album is not *always* danceable, which paradoxically shouldn't be a problem for a full length release in the IDM category -- here admittedly drawing from UK garage and drum'n'bass, but also keen on setting up a cinematic mood that goes beyond those influences. What might be a little more of a bummer is that starting with "Etched Headplate", just as William Bevan begins to apply a bit of restraint on the rhythm patterns so that the cuts don't all sound the same, the tracklist loses a bit of momentum, unfortunately. The small problem is not that the music is not danceable anymore, it's that it also becomes less evocative. By this point, some of the echo-drenched chipmunk vocals retrospectively come off as slightly dated, probably because not much else takes center stage. It's as if Bevan was having a little trouble finding his footing so as to suggest something that would be both true to the initial formula while also getting out of it to an extent... And I suspect it's the sort of self-questioning that then led him to only release EPs and singles after *Untrue*. Quite a wise thing to do when you reach that sort of overnight critical success with one single album, and yet know where your true strengths lie... Fortunately, William *does* manage to find a very firm ground in the last leg of the LP, therefore striking the proverbial landing. "Homeless" succeeds thanks to its infectious basslines, and to how soulful and poetic its distant-sounding vocal snippets are. And "Raver" is a great closer thanks to how its sense of rhythmical economy is neatly balanced out with lush synths layering and pointed, precise samples of marimbas. Those are the sort of simple details that can transcend a whole composition, and when Burial pulls it off this way, the project indeed deserves the heaps of praise it received. Less is more, as music history often proves. 4/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums 9/10 for more general purposes (5/5 for the musicianship and production values + 4/5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 103 (including this one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 113 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 240 ---- Hey Émile, j'ai répondu sous Demon Days ET ta sélection pour la users list ! 🙂

Duplicate 4 3

File under that kind of electronic they play at Boutique hotel pool areas

I listened to Untrue twice, once on speaker and once on headphones, and agree the immersive experience is better, it's a cool soundscape that can easily tell a story but really would be at its best behind footage or as the soundtrack to lived experiences. As a standalone piece, solid 3/5, can see why it'd be more resonant with some people though.

It seems like people who like this kind of thing like this a lot. So I conclude it's just not my genre. Crackle crackle crackle crackle. Ambient all-interlude or the usual repetitive beats, distinguished by sounding like somebody is playing it from a couple floors down the enclosed stairwell of my 90s college dorm. Soothing enough to play in the background.

I don't understand the appeal of electronic music like this. For background, I suppose it was just fine.

I didn’t like this. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t my thing.

Once they get a drum track they like they stick with it.

Rubbish

The first track was probably AI generated under the prompt of ‘make the most annoying song possible for this listener’. Tedious repetition of a phrase over tuneless ‘beats’. This might well be the best electronics album ever. I’ll never know. Because there is no way on earth I’m listening to the albums that are worse than this.

Complete waste of time. Just do the exact same thing on repetition and call it a song.

I was so bored by this.

Not for me. Too much noise.