Streetlands

Since putting out the haunted garage-dubstep classic *Untrue* in 2007, the British producer Burial has moved steadily toward abstraction: longer tracks, fewer rhythmic anchors, and digressive, suitelike structures that unfold more like stories than songs. Like January 2022’s *Antidawn*, October’s *Streetlands* represents the most extreme end of his sound, layering vinyl crackle, vaporous synthesizer melodies, and huge washes of reverb into static sound sculptures that feel like breather moments in zombie movies. And like zombie movies, they’re eerie but beautiful (the tinkling bells and liquid vocal sample in the first section of “Streetlands”), and occasionally hopeful until the violence hits (the climactic dissonance in the second half of “Exokind”). In a way, it’s hard to imagine he ever had anything to do with dance music, but it also makes a kind of poetic sense: like the underground garage and 2-step he came up with, *Streetlands* is music for shadows.

Burial finishes 2022 with a follow up to ANTIDAWN, the sublime three-track EP 'Streetlands' There is something out there . . .

Continuing in the vein of January’s Antidawn EP, Burial’s latest three-tracker dispenses with the drums entirely, instead exploring an ambient expanse of choir and strings.

With his EPs Antidawn and Streetlands, Burial released nearly 80 minutes of ambient music in 2022.