Dubstep, Burial, and Me

I am connecting the dots here between myself and an album I've fallen in love with. I am predisposed to simply say its great and its greatness is self-evident. But sometimes its best to work in opposition to your natural predispositions. So that's what I am going to do.

The artist's name is Burial. The album is called Untrue. Its a piece of electronic music composed and produced by one man using a computer. The genre is called dubstep. Someone somewhere said it sounds like South London underwater.


I first encountered dubstep in the winter of 2006. Karine and I were living in a beautiful second floor apartment near Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis. Hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings, art-deco tile in the bathroom. The place was a dream. On Friday nights we would curl up in front of the fireplace drinking red wine from the giant burgundy glasses I gave her the afternoon I asked her to marry me. When the snow was falling gently outside and the wood piled high beside the fireplace I wanted to listen to dubstep. It was the perfect music for those moments. It sounded like snow sifting down through a cone of light cast by a streetlamp in the empty night.

That's what I thought anyways. Karine was never really into Scuba, the dubstep artist we listened to on those wintry nights. She preferred Johanna Newsome for those moments.

Dubstep has been on my radar since then. But my radar is a lazy radar. Burial is the first thing dubstep since Scuba to ping. I bought Untrue during the rainy season and have been digging into it ever since. Burial makes a lot of sense during the rainy season. I would not recommend using it as the soundtrack for a sunny day barbecue.

Scuba --
Burial --