Domestic Surrealism by burmaunderground

In 2022, burmaunderground founder Robert Detman faced a reckoning. He had made the difficult decision to end his many years long writing career, and felt another creative outlet calling. Coming through the unsettling era of the pandemic, and after a many years long hiatus, Detman thought he might take up songwriting again. He had no idea how important this choice would become. On reflection, he recognized his passion for music and believed that his earlier burmaunderground efforts, notably 2003’s Post-whistler Restorer, was no fluke.

Throughout the end of 2022 and into 2023, Detman wrote the songs that would become Subaqueous Lunar Affirmations. However, even with over a year of material to draw from, or approximately twenty songs, he felt he had yet to have written a proper rock song, and that would become a project and focus of his songwriting going forward. But he also kept at the ballads, the mellow songs that went over well at the open mics he played every week. On weekends, he retreated to his home studio and recorded track after track of songs as they developed. By the end of 2024, he realized he had another album, if not two. The material was deeply personal, and for Detman, the songwriting process had been cathartic.

Detman, initially, was concerned that this material, raw and emotionally revelatory, might be taking the work in the wrong direction: “At the time of writing these songs, I almost always had one thought: Not another song about this.”

However, that focus and fixation would lend a powerful drive to the songs.

“In the past, when I was writing as a way of personal excavation–I might have turned these missives into journal entries, into essays, or stories. But now they live in song in a way that I couldn’t have planned.”

And thus, Domestic Surrealism, the third burmaunderground album, was born.

“I grew up in the late seventies, when your favorite band’s next album always had a theme. The infamous concept album. This idea seems to have lost credence in the short attention span era with the drive to produce singles, and the disproportionate collections that saturate artist’s catalogs.

Detman, who works in architecture, used a familiar analogy. “The sum,” he says, “is almost always greater than the parts. You go into a building you have designed with all the thought and care that goes into that–and after it’s constructed you can be amazed at subtle moves that happened because they were in your subconscious. That works with music, too, with a comprehensive album cycle.

“I’m pleased with the thematic arc of Domestic Surrealism. There is something to be said for the focused effort over time to a collection of songs, and this is probably the first time I’ve been so intentional about it. I was thrilled to be so deliberate in my song selection, album theme, and graphic design.”

This obsessive focus has yielded some of the best songs of the burmaunderground catalog. In Domestic Surrealism, Detman’s unique songcraft explores the lyrical power of catharsis carried on the steady tempo of personal resolve. Tales of disconnection and occasionally, despair, are married to solid song arrangements, imbued with indelible hooks and judicious production values.

Domestic Surrealism is nothing less than the document of a passage through a dark time. A message to go unanswered. A crucible.

In fact, art is created in the midst of chaos. One has to only consider Domestic Surrealism, which proves to be the most defiant, carefully wrought, and brilliant burmaunderground album to date.

BURMAUNDERGROUND founder, Robert Detman, is a Midwestern born + Oakland based musician with a penchant for discovery in songwriting and the pursuit of the unconventional, in a realm of indelible hooks, melodies galore, unsentimental yet emotional writing, executed with solid, exploratory production.


DETMAN WRITES ABOUT MUSIC AND PROCESS: https://100songsproject.substack.com/