Burial’s debut sits heavily in a cloud of the traditions and politics of Britain’s dance-music underground: 2step, dubstep, techstep, and so on. For those not immersed in that tangled entity of genres and subgenres, assigning labels to this excellent collection of tracks can be more confusing than enlightening. However, all you really need to know is that Burial has made an album full of nostalgia and urban desolation; its palette of swung, slightly off-time beats and wide bass is a perfect expression for it.
Reading threads on dubstep discussion boards about Burial reveals how strong the artist’s primary elements resonate with its first audience: a British urban audience (“South London youth”), for whom a little sound, like a skittering footstep-against-space, can evoke a childhood home near a train yard, and years of drenching rain. I can’t boast deep knowledge of this. Still, the artist’s contribution is more powerful than merely widening the appeal from a male-centric / “anti-pop” stance in British underground dance. It legitimises the genre’s emotional power for its original fans, as well as for those just learning about this music for the first time.