Burial AKA William Emmanuel Beva represents to me what cyberpunk music should sound like. If there is such a thing as cyberpunk music.

Early-ish Skinny Puppy, early Minsitry and perhaps also Front Line Assembly sometimes get that eerie feeling just right but admittedly they all sound dated by now.

Burial on the other hand still sounds futuristic even today, two decades later. Burial sounds nothing like Ministry mentioned above, why compare the two? For me personally all these examples when at their peak invoke nightmares of a dystopian future. A cyberpunk character, a hacker punk, a high-tech low life. It's hard or even impossible to define this rigorously. It's just a feeling. It's one of those things that are hard to formally define but you know it when you encounter it.

Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre in which the future world is portrayed as one in which society is largely controlled by computers, at the expense of daily life and social order. Literature, movies and video games of this genre point to a fear that the world may eventually be run solely by computers, including unusual scenarios where nonliving forms take on life-like actions and capabilities. Rebellion against large corporations and established organizations is a key aspect of cyberpunk. As such, main characters are often portrayed as alienated and marginalized by society. - source

Cyberpunk may be a science fiction genre first and foremost but because of the direction the world is heading it increasingly bleeds over into consensus reality.

Burial is the sound of the actual realistic de facto dystopia. It's what an alienated cyberpunk maybe would listen to in a world of high tech and low life. Or rather it's the sound of that world itself.

Burial spawned the genre Dubstep of which a deformed form rose to a short lived mainstream popularity some years ago. When hearing Burial it's hard to imagine this form of music would turn into obnoxious

DUBUBUBUB WUBUBUB WUUUUUB {words} DUUUUUB WUUUUUB DUUUUUB ERERERR.

This is the most recent piece of music I know of that truly sounds futuristic and otherworldly. Somehow music ended with Burial for me. Maybe this is why I'm generally so drawn to more "primitive" and aggressive forms of musical expressions, like Crust Punk.

Burial is the sound of being in the machine. Walking or biking through an almost empty city center during a rainy night. Chill, upbeat, sad and weird, all at the same time. "Boring" but an interesting expression of uncanny auditory minimalism. The sound of a world with technology too advanced to fully grasp. The technology is distinguishable from magic but advanced enough for us to sense ghosts in the machine. Can you, with a straight face, say that you understand the inner workings of your CPU? If you listen closely you may hear the Hoodoo gods calling in the system. The eerie feeling of being enclosed by ever-repeating fractal-like shadows from the past. A future now where you are not the antihero.

It fits so well into our current world.

Burial denotes complete orthogonal opposite to the Synthwawe cliche maximized with disgusting nostalgia, the perfect example of what Mark Fisher would call hauntology, completely empty of all substance and just an infinite recursive repetition of naive hopes of a future that never came and now feels impossible.

Burial represents a nihilistic hyperrealism. Fuck it, the future never came so here's the sound of what we actually got. Acceptance of the fact that things never turn out the way you expect them to.

Many have tried to imitate the unique sound of Burial but in my humble opinion very few has succeeded capture the eerie Cyberpunk vibe of Burial.

This just my personal reading of Burial, others may disagree.