"we're all dead, just not yet buried..." Nicholaj DeMattos Frisvold

Four or five years ago all you would have heard the Mystery-Saint listening to was older music, Miles Davis's Dark Magus years, Exhuma, Dr. John, Can, Brian Eno and Klaus Schulze but a sea change has come dear readers; there is a lot of amazing new music out there. Artists are taking the control offered by modern technology to create ever more challenging and dare I say it "psychedelic" sounds.
Take Burial for example. In 2011 Burial released Stolen Dog on their Street Halo single and pushed this whole dub step thing into a new place. Skrillex? Please, frat boy music! Give one listen to Stolen Dog and then try to give it any label, it defies all; pure sound painting, which is what music should be. So a little time goes by and Kindred comes out. The songs are now longer, like free jazz epics, the sound is like urban grime and sidewalk flowers, like city rain grey and the rainbow that conquers it. Now, in late 2012 there appears out of nowhere this new Burial release with two epic tracks, Truant and Rough Sleeper.  Truant is like walking on a ghost road, shuffling down a rainy street. Around four minutes in the various percussion sounds and synth flares begin to acquire a magick and motion of their own; things come alive and begin to dance, bones grow flesh and orbs gather in the graveyard. Soon it all falls apart again though. Did it ever really happen? Did I just hear/ see that? Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, the graveyard is quiet again. Heavy clouds descend. Around seven minutes into the piece light begins to cut through the gloom, lasers battle with sheets of rain but as the song ends the storm has gained the upper hand and is a tornado of sharp elbows and swinging fists.

Rough Sleeper if anything is more abstract and free. Song structures appear and tease us and then disappear all accompanied to the click clacking of ghost blocks and bone percussion.

Burial sounds awesome in the city, it's like it was made to blend in with the urban environment but still accentuate it for the positive as Bing and The Andrews Sisters would say. Get out there and get some, all available on iTunes. Best music of 2012 for sure...