Antidawn EP

Album review

“Antidawn reduces Burial’s music to just the vapours,” says Hyperdub, the label of the enigmatic London producer. Almost silent in the media, we won't have to count on Will Bevan to get a proper analysis of this 43-minute "EP", his longest record since 2007 and Untrue, his second album which propelled him to the rank of British electronic music genius. The man who described his sound as "the echo of the music you hear coming out of a club" has added an insulating layer between his studio and us, and what we get on this record is effectively reduced to "Burial vapours". An "ultra-ambient" concept that was teased at by Burial on Dolphinz and State Forest, the B-sides to Claustro (2019) and Chemz (2020), and masterfully directed on the opening piece, Strange Neighborhood, an 11-minute film that takes us for a walk between different sound sketches, as if we are on a record that keeps skipping. In this synthetic fog, we hear machine noises, a thunderstorm, a police siren, an organ playing in the distance and this tiny hi-hat all around that we hear making “chck” sounds. On Antidawn, Burial features 8 minutes of floating - literally, there's nothing to rest on - between New Age keyboards and drone, while New Love seems to sound like a club night (with an excellent finale) before a final after-party in the flat above (Flat Upstairs). Burial, who is already a cut above the rest, raises the bar a little higher with this gripping album. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz