During the year I bought one of those pairs of in-your-ear headphones that Bose has latterly taken to advertising on every second Web site. They are very good headphones: the sound is clear, a lot of extraneous outside noise is filtered out, and they are comfortable. They are way better than the equivalents offered by Apple (and obviously not even comparable with the horrible phones that come with an iPod). (My only criticism is that you have to be careful not to lose the little silicone bits that stick in your ear, they are not affixed as well as they might be.)
Listening to Burial's "Untrue" through these headphones is a revelation. All the nooks and crannies of the sound are there, the bass is wicked, and generally the sound is just huge. I have no background in dubstep, and have only spent an hour or so of my life in Sarf London, so there is the sense, as with crucial seventies dub reggae (a not coincidental comparison), of surreptitiously listening in on something to which I was not invited. Plus, we are out on the cutting edge of music here. Nevertheless, if you found somebody who listened to all the right music from 1979 to 1983 and who then stopped listening to music altogether, they would experience a strong sense of continuity here. Really, only the beats have changed. Certainly, I can see why Mark K-Punk would like this: there is a lot of John Foxx in those synths.
In 12 months time I may or may not be as obsessed with this record as I am right now, but for the time being I am drawn back to it at least as strongly as I was drawn back to The Field's "From Here We Go Sublime" a few months ago. It's nice to think that from my jaded and cynical standpoint I can still fall for something as simple (and complex) as a piece of music.
