199 words about Burial

Burial's first two albums were, among other things, masterpieces of world-building, dystopian but sensual. It felt a bit deflating when he retreated afterward into singles and EPs — until, of course, he compiled all of those in reverse-chronological order as Tunes 2011-2019, retconning a two-hour narrative arc from the astral terror of “Nightmarket” to the concrete melancholia of “NYC.” It's worth listening to his work this decade, then, as components of a new whole, one that's finally coming into focus. It began with a pair of vaporous, drum-free collections, but recent work has stumbled into EQ-killing trance, densely layered jungle, and relentless breakbeats. (I include here the violently arpeggiated soundtrack for Baby Invasion — which, yes, you have to watch an entire Harmony Korine movie to listen to). If early work posited rave culture as a forsaken ideal, then the new stuff stumbles headlong into some new unholy warehouse, finding parties at once more hallucinatory and apocalyptic than he had dreamed. The new "Comafields" and "Imaginary Festival" feel major, in this regard: a suite-like thesis statement from the last party in existence, Burial's loner symphonies growing increasingly widescreen.