Jittered Grooves: Micro-timing “Archangel”

Burial, is a critically acclaimed UK electronic musician known for his unusual rhythms. He created his
Mercury Prize-nominated album Untrue in Sound Forge 5, an audio editing software with
extremely limited functionality, notably the lack of a quantization feature. Through a micro-timing
analysis of Burial’s 2007 track “Archangel”, I show that the placement of certain elements off of the
conventional metric aid in establishing his unique rhythms. Specifically, the jittered elements cause glitch stutters as well as a perceived rushing of implied space. This paper was given at Rhythm in Music Since 1900, CU Boulder, 18th November 2019.