10 years on: 7 artists tell us how Burial's 'Untrue' changed their lives

I was very late being introduced to ‘Untrue’ - around 2012. It was my friends who had always been more inclined towards dance music than I had at that point who introduced me. The album blew me away, I'd never heard anything beat based that carried so much emotional weight whilst carrying a punch too. The way which background noise is used also reminded me a lot of Max Richter who was very influential on me at the time.

It sounds so tortured. The hazy wind effects and other background noises combined with distraught vocals and cinematic synths give the impression of the music always searching for a resting place. At points you have moments of beauty which break out like the ending of 'Shell of Light', but as a whole the album is restless.

The album was played a lot driving around in my car the summer after graduating University in 2012. To me it brings back memories of not really knowing the next step at this point in life. Driving late at night with no real place to be.

Looking back since 2007 we've seen a wave of producers become more interested in exploring deeper depths of emotion in dance music with huge credit towards ‘Untrue’. People have become much more fascinated than before in exploring elements outside of the pure euphoria that we would traditionally associate with dance music, and they have started looking inwards too. This is certainly how it's influenced myself at least.

I can’t even remember how I first came about Hyperdub and Burial, it just seems so inherent to underground music, but I was definitely in school at the time and I must’ve just binged on it, soundtracking the years of my teenage angst.

‘Untrue’ is incredibly influential. It’s a seminal, iconic piece of work which massively changed the face of electronic music. Fusing the sounds of garage, dubstep and ambient in such a creative, ethereal and unique way was a catalyst for so many musical trends and patterns in dance music. The fashion for mixing club music with pitch-bended r’n’b vocals, you could arguably say, stems from Burial. It was robbed of a Mercury Prize award in my opinion, this is the shit that made me want to DJ.

It came about when I started experimenting and learning how to DJ so there’s something really familiar, nostalgic and warm about the album when I listen to it. It reminds me of a period of my life where I was just figuring out who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do, and inspired me to make the decisions I’ve made to get to where I am now.

I love how versatile it is. You can listen to it anywhere and it just works. It’s a masterpiece fit for the club (I’ll always remember them Oneman blends), gym, shower and no-one will ever tell you to turn it off.

I discovered burial on a message board around the time of the first full length record. Then I remember the day I heard 'Archangel' - I was so shocked that I literally got up from my desk and left my apartment in Brooklyn and walked around Manhattan going to every record store trying to find a copy of it for sale.

‘Untrue’ kind of brought to completion a thought I had been developing listening to experimental and ambient music for years: paradoxically when sound is unburdened of its task of having to fit in as music, its musical potential actually becomes unrestricted and infinite. This point can be seen at so many levels across this record: consider the vocal performances alone, if you can call them that, and the way they express pure infinite affect.

While ‘Untrue’ liberated me to do a lot more singing and sound design, Burial’s entire career has really taught me to be emotionally open in a special way. For that I owe him an unrepayable debt. He also just taught me a lot about incomplete pictures and the way they amplify the emotional charge of a piece of work.

Burial was a big influence on the sound design and the sensitivity, both sonically and emotionally speaking, of my second album ‘Total Loss’. My second record has a lot to do with mourning the death of my friend, and Burial’s music really taught me a lot about how to interact more honestly with the ghosts of my life.

I’ve never met Burial but I would really love to. Someone I know worked on a moving crew with him in London, packing up and moving houses for people. Apparently he's injured his back doing that, and I have a chronic pain situation with my own back, so I feel like we would just have so much to talk about LOL.

The things Burial is influenced by, basically pirate radio music, are also my main influences, they are where I come from. Equally there's so much emotion in Burial's music, so much loneliness, that's what I relate to most. For me it's the sound of empty clubs, the day after, the vibes in the walls, and I'm deeply interested in that. I always was but ‘Untrue’ expressed it beautifully.

I was starting to work on ‘I'm New Here’ in 2007 and listening to Burial a lot; I wasn't conscious of it at the time but it influenced my production of that record. Whilst you can hear Burials influences when you listen to ‘Untrue’, by creating a more sort of dusty and fragile version of 2-step garage he made something totally original. Kind of what British music has always done best: take some existing elements and make something totally new and a bit wonky and fucked up with it.

I also want to say I've loved everything Burial has done since, I'm basically a total fan of him and his music, and I think it will last forever and will always be discovered and listened to, because it’s such honest and timeless music, and he is a beautiful soul and you can hear that in his productions.