It was only two weeks, but I feel like it was months ago that I last sat in the studio at FBI playing a Join The Dots selection. This week, Emmy Hennings is in for our regular segment, The Voice, and we’ll be talking Burial. Here’s a taste from Emmy’s glowing review of Burial’s Untrue for Cyclic Defrost.

Right now my favourite is ‘Etched Headplate’, a song (if that’s the right term, and I’m really not sure that it is) that makes no more sense to me now than it did three weeks ago, upon first encounter. (And what is an etched headplate? An android with a serial number? A person with a turntable and stylus in place of a skull?). Everything here is stretched and warped: the bass, which lifts up like building panels in a steady wind, a huge whoomphing noise; the voices. The voices. Imagine Beyonce’s ‘Dangerously In Love’ with the yearning increased by about three thousand-fold and you’re somewhere near the emotion of it. Then picture that r’n’b voice splitting into three thousand glyphs. Content becomes form; meaning becomes the shape of those voices gliding and spiralling out, and then stopped, rewound, sent down several pitches between syllables. All that’s steady is the sound of the cigarette-lighter percussion, flicking on, off, on. It’s just gorgeous. Heart-bruisingly, brain-fryingly gorgeous.

I’m still yet to get the proper version, and Hyperdub’s promobot is digging into my brain. So, on Thursday night, we’ll be playing cuts from Untrue, and Emmy will chew the fat about her Burial interview for Cyclic Defrost, plus Sam Cooke, Beyonce, Groove Chronicles and whatever else crosses our path in this occasional dig into the human voice.