Introducing: Burn

Luxembourg-based duo BURN dive deep into the shadowy world of modern trip-hop on their debut album Chopped and Shattered, arriving 27th March. Built around heavy basslines, fragmented vocal textures and emotionally charged songwriting, the record channels the spirit of classic 90s trip-hop while pushing the genre into darker, contemporary territory. Inspired by artists like Portishead, Kosheen and William Orbit, the album unfolds as a carefully sequenced emotional journey where every track title forms part of a larger poetic sentence: Pockets That Remain Broken Often Blossom Late At Night. Across immersive production, melancholic lyricism and striking experimentation, BURN craft a debut that feels cinematic, intimate and quietly devastating.

Your debut album Chopped and Shattered feels deeply rooted in trip-hop’s legacy while still sounding contemporary. How did you approach balancing those classic influences with a more modern electronic edge?

BURN: That’s a great observation indeed! We are both big trip-hop fans but we also listen to more contemporary electronic music. We are also both very eclectic in our music taste. From nujazz to drum and bass, and a lot of stuff in between.So, creating a fusion of the classic trip-hop with a more modern sound came somewhat naturally. We did discuss it, though, and creating a sonic blend of sorts was a conscious decision. For example, the first track we recorded for this project was “Pockets”, which combines a trip hop beat with vocal chops. The album would not be the same, had it not been for that vox chops experiment and embedding them in the trip-hop arrangement.From then on, the concept of “chopped vocals and shattered hearts” became the theme of all the subsequent work.

There’s a strong emotional arc running through the record, moving between introspection, tension and release. Was that narrative intentional from the start, or did it emerge naturally during the writing process?

BURN: Ewa has always felt most comfortable exploring darker, more somber themes in her writing, and Bartek’s music provided the perfect, atmospheric backdrop for that. Most of the lyrics grew out of very specific metaphors.For instance, the idea for 'Pockets' came from that feeling of 'emptying your pockets' after a trip to the beach. Ewa started thinking about people who are like sand—they keep falling out of the hidden corners of your life long after the relationship has ended.In 'Broken,' she built the narrative around the concept of a 'deaf heart.' It’s like trying to talk sense into someone who is hopelessly in love, and who is saying: 'Don't speak to it, my heart can't hear you.' It’s that desperate attempt to convince someone to simply... 'un-love.''Often' was actually inspired by Kae Tempest’s latest work. Ewa wanted to touch on the modern condition—how we disappear into virtual realities, how we stop listening to one another and just resort to shouting. But as the album progresses, she found herself returning to themes of loneliness in 'That' and the struggle to cut ties with toxic connections in 'Late.'Sometimes we wonder where all this darkness comes from. We both have happy family lives, so perhaps creating this melancholic music is our way of letting those other shadows breathe. Or keeping them under control through creativity.

Each track title forms part of a larger sentence — “Pockets That Remain Broken Often Blossom Late At Night.” When did that concept come into play, and how does it shape the listener’s experience of the album?

BURN: The first tracks came together without any grand plan. The concept actually started to form around the vocal chops that Bartek was creating. 'Pockets' was the first one. We felt that the theme of a broken heart paired perfectly with those fragmented, 'cut-up' vocals.After the second track, we made a conscious decision: why not record an entire album where the tracklist itself forms a complete sentence?Initially, the title was much darker, a bit more gloomy. It actually started with “Pockets” but it was meant to finish with “Broken”. But Bartek wanted to inject a sense of optimism and hope into the narrative, which led us to 'Blossom'. It’s actually the only 'positive' moment on the record. When Ewa wrote the lyrics for this song, it was summer, the sun was shining, and she just felt inspired to write something about 'blooming.'Setting a roadmap for the titles before the songs were even finished turned out to be a fascinating experiment. It forced us to compose the vocal parts and the arrangements specifically to fit that exact flow. It really streamlined our process and, most importantly, it helped us skip the hardest part of making an album—arguing over the track order! We already knew exactly where each piece belonged.

Sonically, the album leans into deep basslines, layered textures and immersive atmospheres. Can you talk us through your production process and how you build that sense of space and mood in your tracks?

BURN: There was a healthy dose of experimentation in how Bartek approached the individual demos. Since we both had the vision already settled in our minds, including the track order, it became more about surprising ourselves, and the album listeners, with each song that followed.Once Ewa’s lyrics and vocals were ready, Bartek would go back to the initial arrangement and build up on the original ideas while incorporating the mood of the vocals.For example, the ending of “Often”, which comes rather suddenly, transforms the sound quite abruptly. Filled with just aggressive bass hits and Ewa’s angry whispers, it would not have been possible at the demo stage. But this is where fun begins for Bartek - looking for that occasional element of surprise to complement the space and the mood of the tracks.In another track, “Blossom”, we felt that the choruses were not powerful or modern enough. This one took the longest to complete, actually, with Bartek eventually adding house-like beats to the choruses. Plus the vox-chops-based final minutes which filled up the space with shiny reverbs and delays to complement what has become the most optimistic song on the album.

Trip-hop has always been associated with a certain mood and era. What does the genre mean to you today, and how do you see your sound evolving beyond this debut release?

BURN: For Ewa, trip-hop has always been about the beauty of broken rhythms and syncopation—elements that she instinctively loved in music. But beyond the technical side, trip-hop is essentially a melting pot of different genres, which is a perfect reflection of her own musical soul.Growing up, her house was filled with the sounds her father listened to—a lot of Jazz, Bach, and Blues. That foundation stayed with her. She feels most at home in a bluesy, soulful vocal style, and that raw, emotional delivery blends seamlessly with the trip-hop aesthetic. She has always been drawn to the 'unobvious' in music, and there is so much of that unpredictability in this genre.For Bartek, it has always been a combination of the melancholic memories going back to the 1990s. The sentiment has become a driving force, in a sense, to create a more contemporary approach to the genre, especially after the classic trip-hop sound became much less present in the 2000s music. Even now, all those years later, Bartek often comes back to the album which became a sort-of blueprint for him, Portishead’s “Dummy”However, having said all of the above, we would not say that the material on “Chopped and Shattered” is 'typical' trip-hop. It is an evolution. There’s a strong electronic presence and a touch of industrial grit. What really sets it apart for us is that heavy, signature bass that Bartek brings to the table. It’s a very specific, crushing weight that Ewa hasn’t heard anywhere else, and it pushes the BURN sound into a much more modern, darker territory than the classic 1990s era.