Review Summary: Buried alive by a Rival Dealer
It seems William Bevan (Aka. Burial) has taken a leaf out of Peter Jackson's book (and Santa's for that matter) and decided to coincide his releases with the arrival of illuminated Coca-Cola trucks. Just like the Lord of the Rings films became synonymous with the cold of autumn, Bevan's slew of annual releases have appropriated a similar invocation of autumnal pleasure. What a generous fella, ay?
For those who haven't heard of Burial, his signature seductive ambience and hypnotic beats in the late noughties dragged the Dubstep genre kicking and screaming out of its ridiculous hypertelic excesses. While 'Woah man check this drop out! It's pure FILTH,' became a common remark in the underground scene as producers such as Bar 9 and 16Bit became insistent on out 'dropping' each other, Ketamine became the choice drug for its fans. Unsurprisingly, Dubstep began to collapse under its own weight. However, much in the same way as Horror fans argue against their genre being accused as superficial trash by citing the David Cronenberg back catalogue, those who mock Dubstep can be silenced the second someone throws on Burial's 2007 LP Untrue. Bevan eschews the genre's dependence on bass drops and wobbles for thinner sounding beats; mimicking the depth provided by the weight of the genre's bass lines with a new emphasis on sonic layering and fractured, seemingly aleatoric arrangements.
With his new EP, Rival Dealer, he's clearly stuck to his longer structures and elegiac melodies, however, whereas before most of his samples, crackling atmospherics and involutions made the listener feel like they were walking through a derelict council estate in London on an early morning, the three new tracks on the EP, Rival Dealer, Come Down to Us and Hiders summon a demarcated sense of nostalgia. The rhythms Bevan used on earlier EPs such as Kindred (2012) and Truant/Rough Sleeper appeared to, at times, converge onto a Speed Garage-esque trajectory. In Rival Dealer however, the title track pertains to a kinetic, thunderous rhythm track inspired by 90's break beats and Hard House whereas Come Down to Us slows the pace with more traditional Dub beats.
With the final two tracks, Bevan begins to incorporate his newer ideas. Much in the same way as his music perpetuates an atrophic, concatenation of soulful vocals and sampled monologues, the sonic ideas jolt and glitch into anachronisms; it almost sounds like the songs are coming from a malfunctioning radio playing an early nineties midnight resident slot. His atmospherics have previously always come across as contemporaneous, constantly anchored by the tactility and archaic qualities of the crackling effects provided by SoundForge (the audio editing program he uses). In this case, the timelessness of his sound has been accelerated by his effect choices rather than being contained by it. Of course, the warmth of the vocal samples and the unreliability of his drum tracks keep the sound futuristic and soulful, although this is the first time his music has induced such an intense sense of nostalgia.
Ultimately, don't worry if you're still having nightmares about K holes and MC's butchering your favourite drops, Bevan will help save your soul; something he's been doing for seven years now. Despite lacking the immediacy of Kindred and Untrue, his new EP is a great listen. If you don't mind though i'm going to put on a hoody, some converses and buy a train ticket to Croydon so I can go for a walk, Kidulthood style.
