ANTIDAWN by BURIAL

(RH Record of the week review at the bottom of this text)

43 minute  5 tracker, his first new album since 2007's  'Untrue'!

‘Antidawn’ reduces Burial’s music to just the vapours. The record explores an interzone between dislocated, patchwork songwriting and eerie, open-world game-space ambience. In the resulting no man’s land, lyrics take precedence over song, lonely phrases colour the haze, a stark and fragmented structure makes time slow down.‘Antidawn’ seems to tell a story of a wintertime city, and something beckoning you to follow it into the night. The result is both comforting and disturbing, producing a quiet and uncanny glow against the cold. Sometimes, as it enters 'a bad place', it takes your breath away. And time just stops.

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Rush Hour Store Record of the week W04:

After almost fifteen years Burial is back with a new album, following up last year’s whooping ‘Shock Power of Love EP’ and the twelve minute UK garage/breakbeat frenzy that was ‘Chemz’.

But the Burial of ‘Antidawn’ is not the same Burial that’s been pushing sound systems to their limits with his own brand of punishing bass experiments. This is the Burial of the ‘Chemz’ b-side ‘Dolphinz’, the Burial that occasionally turns his back on the dancefloor alltogether to look inwards.

One thing hasn’t changed though. Burial still does exactly what he wants whenever he wants to. In this case that means coming up with an album based around alienation and solitude, stretched out over five disorienting ambient noir compositions. 

‘Antidawn’ is the time of night that sounds like a dark fairytale, with distant figures moving around in a haze of static, smoke and solidified stillness. Muffled speech, distant noises and forgotten melodies from the ancient past fading in and out in a strangely familiar parallel world that reveals itself a bit more with every listen. (Rogier)