Burial
Untrue

Sometimes it's easy to think immersed in darkness: vibrations scratch the air, the eyes lighten, the senses expand.

Inevitably, music loves the dark; remaining suspended "on the ground" between notes and notes and notes and whispers of violin and caresses of piano and drum embraces. High rhythms, low rhythms, fast rhythms, slow rhythms, rhythms of someone who needs to enjoy lying in bed, immersed in darkness. Alone. Without hands.

But Burial is not like that. William Bevan doesn't need lights off, chamber atmospheres. He creates the notes that paint the night.

Enough, the eyelids are falling, let's move on to the record.

"Untrue" could be cataloged, labeled, branded as a profoundly dub album. "Profoundly": never was a word more fitting; it is precisely the element of depth, of digging into the earth (and into our soul in this case) the cornerstone of this work.

Dark sounds, not gloomy, loaded with slow fantasies, distinctly slow, damnably bass. Exactly, drum 'n bass, another keyword.

The incessant, almost methodical, use of a low and cavernous sound (but not for this reason ferrous and strident) is what can be noticed from the start: after the earthy introduction, "Archangel" takes us directly to the roof of a skyscraper, at night, under incessant rain; feeling cold while lying in bed, warm.

If then to all this a voice is added, more voices, subdued, yielding, it quickly becomes clear that our heart can no longer be the same.

A silent, inner, carnal cry opens wide.

And it continues like this, among tracks that unwind and unravel an unpredictable nostalgia, not for something in particular, not for a memory, not for a logical reminder of the mind, but for everything.

"Near Dark" is truly close to total darkness; "Ghost Hardware" seems to dissolve into crystal fragments that pierce our ego: we become sadists of our pain, our new pleasure.

"Endorphin", perhaps the most moving of the entire (art)work, recalls the grittier, more shamanic Massive Attack: it's the apology of silence and the sacred, a paradisiacal drug.

Tears now want to flow, the pleasure is too much, but the sobs would cover the synth. And so for once we force ourselves to remain "real", the metaphysical can wait.

It's time for "Etched Headplate". A new world opens up. The rhythm becomes similar to deep-house, the voice increasingly ethereal, at the edge of androgyny... yet so real.

We pray that this dreamlike journey may never end, afterwards would be oblivion.

The following "In Macdonalds", "Untrue" and "Shell of Light" do nothing but confuse us and make us lose track of what we are hearing: trip-hop? electronica? dubstep? house? chamber post-rock? None of this. "Untrue" (the album) is perhaps one of the rare cases where music dominates all its subgenres.

It's still not over.

The last tracks continue their (its) dirty work of redemption, of purification from all that does not want and cannot be Burial. Here are his new doves from the hat: lounge pulsations, tribal scansions, soul choirs.

The vibrations become too many, that thin range of sounds and voices risks invading our intimacy forever.

The end of the album is our salvation.

After all, we certainly wouldn't want to lose our mind...

...or perhaps yes?