- Burial follows-up this year's ambient record with an even more threadbare EP of flickering soundscapes.
- While a Burial record will always sound like a Burial record, there's usually a question mark around which version of him we'll get with each new release. This was especially acute after Antidawn, which felt like an endpoint—the apotheosis of the introspective beatless experiments that began with the staticky hiss of "Nightmarket." But Streetlands ups the ante again. The sparse opener "Hospital Chapel" is completely free of rhythm (and momentum), as undulating and decaying choral chords slouch towards entropy. It sets up an EP where his already inward-facing music begins to collapse in on itself.
The other two tracks have some hints of classic Burial. But only just. The title track starts out with an "Is there somebody out there?" sample and vinyl crackle, before shifting towards premodern sounds: muffled chanting, piano, dripping rain and the occasional gong. At the end, we're treated to some wonderfully emotive chords, but they are slowed to a crawl, unable to shake the overall feel that the track could be used in Guy Ritchie's next King Arthur film.
Major highlight "Exokind" is more nuanced. Around the two-minute mark, for example, there's a "Moth"-style melody, quickly overtaken by sounds that oscillate between between mythic past and techno futurism. Pan-pipes give way to an arpeggio not dissimilar from the X-Files theme song, as chanted vocals and dramatic chord swells underneath. The balance of sci-fi kitsch and Pagan ritualism works surprisingly well, as "Exokind" retains the faintest afterglow of rave.
Burial has spent the last decade and change as a de facto late-night archivist of urban Britain, capturing the emotional range of a pre- and post-Brexit nation through its highs and lows. Although Streetlands suggests the city in its title, the record continues the shift Emeka Okonkwo noted in his review of Antidawn, where it wasn't just the rhythms (or lack thereof) that had changed in Burial's music, but the references. He swapped the sprawl of London for "somewhere rural and dark, with no light pollution."
Streetlands takes this decaying pastoralism to its breaking point: everything here is more barren, the beauty more vaporous and fleeting. While the record certainly has its moments (particularly on "Exokind"), it's also the first Burial record where his singular sound begins to disappear. This is the furthest you can abstract his original ideas before they become something else entirely. Whether that's a bad or a good thing will ultimately depend on what comes next.
Tracklist01. Hospital Chapel
02. Streetlands
03. Exokind