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

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.