Burton Wagner - In the Realms of the Unreal Review

Burton Wagner In the Realms of the Unreal

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Tracklist:
1. From Real to Unreal
2. The Vivian Girls of Abbiennia
3. Girls on the Run
4. (sister)
5. The Assassination of Anna Aronburg
6. War Storm
7. Paradise and Purgatory

Ranking: #155 for 2005

user rating

3.7
great

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4.0
excellent

Nick Greer STAFF (132 Reviews)

2005-12-29 | 32 comments | 2,601 views

Summary: Really nice post-rock that probably won't ever be discovered.

Burton Wagner - In the Realms of the Unreal

For some, 2005 represented a strong year for music in the post-rock genre. A Silver Mount Zion, a side project of members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, released an album, Explosions in the Sky released an EP and composed the "Friday Night Lights" soundtrack, and Jaga Jazzist mixed jazz and choral music into post-rock to create a sweet sound. All in all, a solid year. However most lists will exclude Burton Wagner. This exclusion is with good reason too, he's just a dude with a guitar, mic, echo pedal, and copy of Audacity, and interestingly, a member of the sputnikmusic and musicianforums family (SubtleDagger). His album In the Realms of the Unreal isn't going to be found in a store anywhere, and it's only real exposure is from free copies sent through the mail and the convenience of sites like purevolume.com and myspace. The album is only around 36 minutes, and no songs feature vocals. Some songs are even under a minute, which is a sort of sin in post-rock. So, why even bother writing a review about the music?

It God damn rules. Being privy to Burt's rough draft copies and his personal insight and techniques in writing this album, I feel an intimacy with this album that may make me biased, but even beyond my predisposition to both songs that he would write, and songs in this particular genre, I can recognize a lot of intelligence and ingenuity in this album. Firstly, Burt has a strong understanding of the bands that influence him. This album shows stylistic contributions from bands like Pink Floyd, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Thrice, but Burt doesn't lift ideas for riffs or sounds from these bands, but instead he distills what makes those bands interesting and great and mixes those ideas with his own writing. He takes his sense of the moment and emotive diatonic chord progressions from Pink Floyd, his atmosphere, ambience, and tone from GY!BE, and produces original riffing in the same way Thrice has proven originality by shifting styles from album to album.

These genre and musical influences though are merely means to understand a deeper and more convoluted construction of this album. This album is a concept album revolving around the work of Henry Darger, a recluse who wrote an illustrated 15,000 page book based on the fantasies and realities of his childhood, which is titled In the Realms of the Unreal. Darger's universe revolves around a massive war between two nations and the inclusion of the mythical Vivian girls. Darger's universe is a rich mix of the fantastic and realistic that is magnificently complimented by his collage style illustrations. His ability to distill memories from his childhood, particularly his orphaning, and synthesize them with images from his world, like cut-outs from magazines and newspapers, renders his world incredibly palpable and close while being abstruse and out of this world, or, in another realm. Using the ideas of Darger's work as his primary inspiration Burt created an album that tries to represent the sentiment of In the Realms of the Unreal, which manifested in a form that borrowed aptly from post-rock. The elements of wonder, beauty, reverence, and fear that coexisted in Darger's universe also coexist in Burt's world. Wonderful shimmering guitar melodies over strong chord progressions can shift into dissonant ambience and harrowing screeching courtesy of effect laden vocal tricks. The opening track, "From Real to Unreal" sets a frightening tone with an ominous guitar part mixed with equally tense pick scrapes. However, a later song, "(sister)," manages to be totally consonant. Opposites that sound like they're both by the same creator, part of a greater piece, coexist on the same album in sync with one another.

Burt achieves this balance partially with Darger's help; because all of the songs come from the same preexisting piece, their likeness on that level has obviously influenced a similarity when they manifest as songs. However Burt also uses some cool technical tricks to connect all of the songs. First off, his album is a guitar album, so even when there are tons of effects and ambient blips, there is still usually a strong chord progression underneath that drives the song. These chord progression are simple yet very powerful and memorable. These motivic progressions find themselves overlapping and being featured at different times through the album, and this repetition and combination ideas results in a great combination of emotional reactions to the music. A pretty chord progression underneath the screeching of the microphone and the effect pedal can simultaneously evoke fear and admiration, while a beautiful tone on a guitar can emerge from aggressively strummed chords to evoke beauty and hideousness. Such is this realm of the unreal that Burt handles deftly with pretty minimalist tools. He writes powerful music with an enthralling subject matter. In addition, his riffing is simple but sweet. He uses harmonics and clean tones to his advantage as they stand out from the dissonant parts to be memorable. I feel like there's a different tone for every memorable lead guitar part on the album. giving the album a wider variety of flavors and identities.

However, though I've been complimenting Burt's grasp of emotional content, there are a few glaring flaws with the album. It's short for a concept album and there aren't any lyrics. While Burt does a great job of evoking ideas and images with his music, it seems like his songs could only be stronger with the inclusion of singing and lyrics throughout the album. It's ironic that an album based on a 15,000 page book would be short and terse, and it's not as if adding content would hurt Burt's songs. Also, the mixing isn't immaculate. I understand that using Audacity isn't what a professional musician is going to do, but there are gripes to be had even when excusing the limits of the artist's means. Sometimes, I'll hear a really cool effect and wish it were easier to discern the effect better and that it was in the foreground more, which can be achieved by careful mixing and mastering, which I don't think went into this album. Particularly on the strummed chords during the first half of "Girls on the Run," I'd like to have those harmonics resound more strongly and in the foreground, but they sort of drown in the density of the dissonance (forgive my shitty alliteration there). These mixing woes make this album a headphone-only record because when coming through the tinny, trebly speakers of my laptop, the cool effects that make this album are completely lost.

These gripes are mild though. I am grateful for the 36 minutes I do have, and I don't mind busting out the headphones. Many songs off the album can be found at [url]www.myspace.com/burtonwagner[/url] and [url]www.purevolume.com/burtonwagner[/url] and while Darger's book isn't published and may never be, a documentary on his life and book was made.

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