Burial - Untrue

Untrue has no anthems. The album moves through grief, longing, and complicated tenderness that cannot easily be attributed to a single emotion. Tracks like Archangel and Shell of Light are structurally minimal but internally rich – built from loops that sound simultaneously ancient and urgently present. Pitchfork gave it 9.0 and later named it the most important electronic album of the twenty-first century. It’s music that sounds exactly like what it is: something private, caught by accident.

BURIAL is a mysterious London producer whose identity remained unknown to the public for several years after the album’s release. Untrue captures the sound of the night city – empty streets, bus stops, silhouettes of people passing through rain. Vocal samples from R&B and soul are stripped of their context, leaving only the outline of emotion – loops that pulse like a distant memory.

The album that defined Burial’s melancholic sound – and with it an entire era of dark English electronics, from which whole genres continue to unfold.