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Zero 7
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
Untrue
Universal acclaim
Based on 23 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 317 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Hyperdub
Release Date: 06 November 2007
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Electronic, Alternative, Indie
Summary
The second album for the London-based anonymous dubstep artist.
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
musicOMH.com
Untrue is complex, stark, tender, blurred and breathtaking. Burial has managed the impossible and improved on his faultless debut.
Read Full Review >The Guardian
As addictive as its predecessor, Untrue confirms that Burial possesses not just the keen ear of a Lee Perry or Martin Hannett.
Read Full Review >Tiny Mix Tapes
It seems as though the quick release of Untrue restricted Burial from burying his emotions underneath layers of alternatively sparse and overwhelming production as he did on his debut, resulting in an album that instead wears them unabashedly on its sleeve.
Read Full Review >MSN Consumer Guide (Robert Christgau)
Burbling electronic ticktocks vie with a carillon of bell simulacra, and rarely have vinyl crackle or laser malfunction generated more musicality.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
If you can appreciate the style of dubstep employed by Burial, it's easy to fall head over heels for Untrue, an album on which there are absolutely no mainstream-crossover concessions, no ego trips, and no willful stylistic variation--an album where the music, a singular style of it, takes center stage with no distractions or sideshows, where there's never the urge to skip to the next track, because they're all part and parcel of the greater whole.
Read Full Review >The Wire
Burial has transcended his dubstep origins, belonging to a Gothic tradition that takes in Massive Attack and even 4AD at their most grandiosely despondent. [Jan 2008, p.53]
Dot Music
Untrue is a devastatingly accurate depiction of urban UK--plugging the listener into the matrix of some godforsaken south London satellite, with its identikit fast food joints, repellent inhabitants and anonymous decaying sprawl.
Read Full Review >Observer Music Monthly
Untrue crackles with high-tension, excitement and yearning.
Read Full Review >Drowned In Sound
What gives this album more depth is the focus, the rolling symmetry and cinema.
Read Full Review >PopMatters
The human voice, the most striking change in Burial’s sound, renders Untrue superior to its predecessor.
Read Full Review >Urb
The anonymous producer behind the work of Burial is letting his dubstep sounds progress and on his impressive sophomore album he can be found chasing the transient hints of beauty to be found in the confines of urban desolation.
Read Full Review >Delusions of Adequacy
Even as someone who knows very little about electronic music, this album is affecting. You will never get the urge to skip a song and you will desire and covet every sound that’s emitted from this album because they make up one tremendous, collective entity in Untrue.
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
Top-heavy with sad string passages and mournful vocal loops, Untrue is an album meant to be heard at home, in the car, on headphones-- his songs feel almost like beautiful secrets being whispered to a listener.
Read Full Review >Dusted Magazine
That emptiness tempts a listener in, and puts you in its place--you, in a sense, step into the record’s point of view. This invitation to intimacy is a powerful move that most club music is simply incapable of.
Read Full Review >Village Voice
While the percussion-free 'Endorphin' and 'Dog Shelter' paint haunting pictures of isolation and heartache, a warm and generous humanity runs just beneath the surface. It's this quality that lends the propulsive woodblock throb of the closing 'Raver' its muted euphoria.
Read Full Review >Blender
The album works as an ambient whole, its fog-bank synths, yearning vocal slivers and stoic basslines filling the room with melancholy.
Read Full Review >BBC collective
Burial has concocted a noir-ish sound that’s as powerful as it is atmospheric.
Read Full Review >Slant Magazine
Machine music this unrelentingly intimate is worth the attention it requires.
Read Full Review >Q Magazine
Untrue lives in the present, its more complex moods showcasing the emotional range that marks Burial out as more than just another bloke with a computer. [Jan 2008, p.108]
The Phoenix
Why anyone would want to be subjected to such gloom is a good question, except that Burial is a witch with the kind of drum programming that leaves no choice in the matter.
Read Full Review >Uncut
Untrue is altogether warmer than its predecessor. [Jan 2008, p.87]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 317 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Dave C. gave it a10:
tons of scattered ideas all held together by a single emotion that meander between utter chaos and beautiful superposition.
Adam P gave it a9:
If this album could be any better, it would be the epitome of perfection, and I don't think I could handle that as my mind would explode.
Evil Ed gave it a7:
Wish this won the Mercury instead of the boring Elbow. A good album but you tend to tire a bit from it after multiple plays.
Matheus B gave it a9:
Very deep, touching vocals, almost angelical... put also very sad. It puts together a lot of feelings but not suitable for all places and situations. Works for me though. I loved it.
Jodie L gave it a5:
I actually really enjoy the beats and electronic elements of this album, but seriously when will electronic artists learn, that if you are going to have vocals in the album, provide a second disc, minus the vocals. I would pay an extra $5-$10 for that, if it was released in that fashion, yeah, I would give it a 7 or 8 out of 10, or what the hey, learn how to use a vocoder in an interesting way, John Cale is the only artist I've heard use a vocoder and gone, that sounded unbelievable.
Gabriel gave it a5:
A futuristic boring reality. Untrue gets real, a truly fake of hopes. Buried in rainbows.
Wes M gave it a10:
It's like the beautifully bleak, manic depressive anti-thesis to Since I Left You by the Avalanches.
