Burial
Kindred

Burial is back. The great Burial, the genius, His Holiness Burial. The man so superior that even without knowing a bit of compositional theory, he made millions of people have an orgasm at every beat, low and pitched voice. The man whose voices are never just simple voices, but ghosts of angelic voices, and whose rhythmic patterns are obviously ghosts of rhythmic patterns. The man who often uses the same samples for many different tracks, because clearly they are too exciting to be left to oblivion. The guy from subways and McDonald's, basically.

He returns five years after the stunning Untrue, after several interesting collaborations, to remind us how beautiful the UK-garage rhythms, lows, and pitched voices are, as well as to demonstrate once again how wonderful it is to be moved and to move with music without knowing a bit of compositional theory. But enough with the nice words, let's talk about this wonderful EP. It consists of three long pieces for a total duration of about half an hour, which is already a good thing if, like me, you are a lover of expanded tracks. It is really difficult to talk about it because it is a fantastic EP, and all the pieces hit the target, thanks to our seasoned talent, whom we find this time in an unprecedented guise of a progressive hero. Basically, the three pieces sound like brilliant, nostalgic, and obviously ghostly angelic jumbles of parts that don't fit each other at all, but maybe I'm too enthusiastic, so it's worth saying that, at least initially, the tracks present themselves as consistent even at a compositional level, with a rather decent "build up" in the first part of them (before exploding into the already mentioned jumbles of exciting samples from the Burial house).

In short, it is a progressive-dub work conceived only as the Master could: ruined, skewed, absolutely on point in the vocals and wonderfully incongruent because we all get even more emotional that way, with the sample taken from who knows where that suddenly appears, slowed down and treated a bit with background effects, so not even the most lowly rogue on earth could call him a legal thief. What made me wrinkle my nose the most was the decision not to include even a slow track like the masterpiece "Fostercare" and at times it seems like listening to the ghost of a house record, but an angelic ghost, obviously. This is especially evident in what I consider the best track of the lot, namely "Ashtray Wasp", pure house with solid development and a really emotional ending, just to change things up. But that's okay too; after all, it's an EP that delivers a Burial in a state of grace, so for slower and perhaps ambient pieces, I will wait patiently for an album.

In conclusion, if you like Burial, you will surely love these three compositions; if you despise him, you won't change your mind; if you think he is overrated, with this EP you might discover that he also has some pretty good insights. I personally haven't formed a precise opinion. I prefer to shoot the breeze.