Burial. Kindred EP

Burial Kindred
2012, Hyperdub

8.5 / 10

by Will Fairchild

Burial (also known as William Bevan) has been in hiding for far too long. His eponymous debut album in 2006 gained him critical acclaim from nearly every music outlet, and after his stunning 2007 album, Untrue, Burial had amassed an impressively large fan-base. These two releases were enough to single-handedly create the genre we know as future-garage. Fusing elements of dubstep and garage with hazy ambient landscapes and manipulated high-pitch vocals, Burial imagines one of the most interesting and unique sounds of the London underground scene. After seemingly disappearing in 2007, Burial re-emerged last year and presented a short 3-song EP entitled Street Halo. It was open, deep, and masterfully produced. But his newest EP, Kindred, is easily his most cohesive work yet.

Kindred is a concept we can all relate to. Family members or very close friends. They are the people we share close connections with, they're also the people that can hurt us more than anyone, more than any other physical object in the universe--without them we can't function mentally for long. "Loner" opens with a sample from the movie Evil Dead II. "There is something out there" whispers a frightened man. Slowly the rain builds into a tumultuous, dark city street with windy, razor-sharp arpeggios piercing through everything. The next 30 minutes are filled with lamenting men and women lost in a storm, seemingly strangled through computers and slowed by time repeating lines like "I belong with you/Don't leave/You are the light." "Kindred" calls to mind the surrealism of a lost friendship, one that you know has failed and can never be restored. The end of these songs offer a sense of warmth, some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. Like crepuscular rays providing light after a storm, these short ideas at the tail end of each track offer guidance through rusty and sometimes often dark relationships. 

The trio of tunes represent Burial's tightest, most razor-sharp release yet. It's hard to say whether Burial has a collection of a hundred songs and picks the best to release, or simply works on one until it is perfect. Either way, fans are salivating for more and this EP is a new and exciting direction for Burial. Street Halo was a great collection of songs, but Kindred is more of a perfectly executed idea--a suspension in a dark, turbulent world. All that is left to ask is, what's next from Burial? Hopefully more of where Kindred came from.