Streetlands - Burial, 2022

Hospital Chapel

Dubstep-cum-ambient musician Burial’s Streetlands opens with a disconcerting placidity. Slow, sweeping synths flutter, reaching upward and cooing in bliss. There is an airiness to them, a sore-throated aspiration subtly undergirding the chord. The sensation of this breath becomes more encompassing with each repetition, while the pads fly up and away it is exhaling all around us. Synths begin to take on an animalistic quality: This flying leviathan with antennae swaying idly in the clouds, impossibly light despite impossible mass, each of its cries possessing a timbre entirely too high, too human; unbefitting of its considerable size. Wide circles of gold, pupil-less and arachnid, line its body. Its gaze is indecipherable. We are seen. It seems to beckon us. It is out there. We are out there.