As Christmas approaches and everyone starts to put their 'Top 100 of 2012' lists together, we were pleasantly surprised to hear that Burial had a new EP out shortly. This obviously meant that everyone had to completely rethink their lists, as lets be honest, there's not too many people that weren't highly anticipating this 12", and didn't drop everything they were doing, when they realised they could hear a one minute, low quality preview of it last week.
Since the release of Untrue, Burial has taken his formulaic approach, which has worked so well in the past, and turned it up on it's head. The collaboration with Four Tet earlier in the year proved this. He's constantly strived to push the limits with how experimental he can be, and while doing so found a new confidence with his melodic song writing capabilities.
Rough Sleeper see's a return to the classic Burial feel however with much more of a melodic tone, the organ rushes in from the start, letting the tick of the drums take a back seat, allowing them to drive the song, rather than just an atmospheric tone. The 13 minute journey, takes you through mainly 2 song ideas, with a chorus of uplifting bells carrying you through until almost the end... Burial...happy?... uplifting?.. don't worry! The last 3 minutes take you back to the Untrue days focusing almost entirely on the drums and dark, atmospheric soundscapes.
Split into 5 or 6 sections, Truant is like a small EP in itself. It is essentially 2 minute clips of short songs, dipping in and out with similar vocal samples and sharing the same tempo throughout. In a time where no one seems to have time to listen through a whole album, or even the flipside of singles, Burial has had the right idea here, and taken you on a short 11 minute journey of all his best work in one song.
As there has no doubt already been thousands of critical, descriptive write ups on this EP, by far more credited journalists, we'll leave it at that, because you've already heard this release anyway, so you don't need us to tell you to listen to it.