Burial’s ‘Antidawn’ EP advance-reviewed in full
Found out whether it’s worth the hype right now
In the past, Burial tunes have opened with nearly every kind of sound. Deep, longing sighs. Videogame cackles. Spray-can rattlings. Sirens. But ‘Antidawn’ – the eponymous track from the new EP – opens with a cough.
God knows where this throaty rasp was sampled from, but it seems fitting enough for a mid-COVID release. It also seems prescient. As more online chatter takes place over whether new Burial releases have connotations with current political events like Brexit, the more it seems like the artist is responding to them with subtly cheeky reference. Of course, the isolation of COVID seemed on-brand, perfect for him to capitalise on. In 2020 and 2021, everyone had to stay home from the club, forced to peer out of their rainsoaked windows whether they liked it or not.
At the same time, we’ve withstood nearly a decade and a half of new Burial album hype. For the time being, ‘Antidawn’ might be as close to one as we can get, with these five tracks nearing a 50-minute runtime. Working in the ‘dark ambient Burial’ style – which began with 2017’s Subtemple – it’s a much deeper moment of reflection than his last release Chemz, dropping in the New Year as if to say, “let’s move on from this chapter of our lives”.
Amid dynamic storms of vinyl noise, Antidawn is like the musical equivalent of an angsty teen diary – thoughts thunk and chronicled without much order or theme, then kept to oneself, under lock and key. It also contains some of Burial’s most hurt vocal samplage yet, feeling like a series of mood swings from one track to the next. Our theory is that this is the story of a neurotic protagonist moving to a strange new city. They’re later taken ill, and soon enough, manically long for escape, before finally finding rapid, rabid love.
We begin on ‘Strange Neighbourhood’. It sounds curious, full of wonder at the grandeur of the city, as smeary organs and revelatory timpani herald great proclamations of “walking through the streets”. The titular ‘Antidawn’, by contrast, is meek and anxious. After a dry splutter, we hear “I’ve been in a bad place… with nowhere to go”, in assumed reference to being ill and having to stay in one spot for a dubious length of time. Some sort of writhing background noise – between a gnaw and a whinge – tugs at the first half. By the end, our protagonist recovers from the worst of their symptoms, making peace with isolation via some ethereal singing matched by a tingly harp. It’s one of Burial’s trademark ‘sublime endings’, like that heard on ‘Kindred’ or ‘Rodent’.
The soothing soul vocals of ‘Shadow Paradise’ – “let me hold you” – ease our friend out of the worst of their symptoms, and at exactly five minutes in, a complete recovery is made. Here, organ dirges and four-chord twinkles nestle celebratory trance arps, as once again, a sense of newfound escape into the city – of exploratory nightclubbing and flights of fancy – are evoked by a regular motif heard thereafter: “take me into the dark”.
‘New Love’ hears a new, rare spoken word snippet – “ever since I was young, I wanted to get away” – as a loving romance buds. In the style of ‘The Spell’ and ‘Deep Summer’, it concludes on a bell-toned dance, to the tune of “all I really want is you close to me again”, backboned by cut-off kicks and whistling winds. Hereafter, the nebulous concept of ‘the dark’ is a core focus. ‘Upstairs Flat’ hears the pair move in together, once again free to explore the dark city while nestled “in your loving arms. That’s not to mention the great, cinematic sweeps of ambience rounding off the first half.
We wonder, though, if any of the story of Antidawn takes place in reality. There’s an underlying mood of angst, as if it’s all just a fever dream or lockdown fantasy. Every ambience is looping and often all in the same key, with chord runs often resembling one another. In one case, the exact same ambience appears in two different tracks. And in an apparent nod to his old classic Rough Sleeper, Burial makes constant use of organ or organ-like sounds, which sound almost too comforting. Our sense of being soothed by them isn’t pure, but insidious, like the malaise of lying in an overcomfortable bed, depressed.
We should be hesitant to use the word ‘beatless’, too. On ‘Antidawn’, if we peek our ears more attentively through the resting fog of windchimes and crackle, we notice that drums do clack away in the background. They’re so faint that, rather than driving the track forwards, they give off the sense of time passing unwelcomingly, like the ticks of a grandfather clock caught in a strange stasis.
What’s the takeaway, exactly? Well, perhaps for some, love is really just a dream. Not everyone had the pleasure of finding a ‘turbo relationship’ in 2020, and many of us were resigned to a much less effective source of cathartic escape – Netflix. In as much as ‘Antidawn’ could be a rapturous tale of recovery, love and urban exploration, it could just easily tell the bleak story of a desperate imaginer, chained up next to an overprotective fire, longing for a return to normal.
Jude Iago James
- Burial’s ‘Antidawn’ EP is out on physical formats on January 28 – pre-order your vinyl and CD copies here – or in digital form from Friday.