"Antidawn" marks the return of Burial - our nation's beloved shadow dweller, emo-garage innovator and cultishly adored bass producer. After nearly 2 decades unravelling the mystery - with countless breakdowns, assessments and even dissertations written about how the artist composes and records his music - William Bevan had decided it's time for a further redux.
Reducing the sound to just vapours, the record 'explores an interzone between dislocated, patchwork songwriting and eerie, open-world game-space ambience', which perfectly puts into context what you have in front of you. Like walking through Skyrim's metaverse loaded up on dissociatives and ketamine, there's no real linear structure to the album. As usual, snips, sounds and textures take precedent, but it's the silences and the spaces BETWEEN the snips that Burial has really emphasized on "Antidawn". There's a movement created with sparseness - a change of feeling; a beckoning towards the light through tense and dark realms.
Encapsulated in a frozen, urban Winter; there's movements of painful sadness, juxtaposed between bursts of radioactive warmth as whispers of forgotten angels drift in on FM radio interference. It's quintessential Burial - crackles n static n all - but occupying a space that couldn't be further from the dancefloor. If his more recent 12"s have hinted at this wandering, non-linear, long-walk-home approach then on "Antidawn" we're lost & abandoned in the multidimensional realities of the present; with little reassurance that 'everything’s going to be ok'...
It's as breathtaking and awe-inspiring as you'd expect from the UK demigod yet brittle, fragile, constricted and smothered in darkness. It's really nice to see him explore these realms and while thousands of his online bloggers and trolls will no doubt have countless critiques on his development; I for one am well on board.
STAFF COMMENTS
Matt says: Burial heads even further down the cold, long & lonely road into almost pure isolation. Like walking through Skyrim's metaverse loaded up on dissociatives it's a completely transportive, if fragile and desolate listen.
TRACK LISTING
A1. Strange Neighbourhood [11:04]
A2. Antidawn [08:43]
B1. Shadow Paradise [10:20]
B2. New Love [07:13]
B3. Upstairs Flat [06:07]
