Review Electronic music

Burial, Four Tet & Thom Yorke

Ego/Mirror

Text Records • 2011

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t – at first, we heard it everywhere, then, nowhere at all, and now, out of a sudden, Burial (Dubsteps’ equally hated and praised antihero with a disposition to the anonymous) yet again comes along with two 12-inches that couldn’t be any more brilliant. While Street Halo along with its two bonus-tracks was more of a record for the introverted misanthrope, William Bevan got Four Tet and Thom Yorke to come on board for its second release this Spring. Enriched by the playful quotation-collages of a Four Tet mixed with the voice of Thom Yorke, which seems to have absorbed all the pain in the world, the three musicians have created a double-single that is equally bristling with avant-garde and serenity, while still doing everything right and at the same time taking the necessary step forward. Though Ego seems to be going back to the same old Burial-standards, but then it evolves and finishes off greatly with playful piano-samples. Still, the secret hit remains Mirror – it’s pure magic how the stumbling drum-kit lowers itself onto Thom Yorke’s spherical singing loop until getting flanked by precisely portioned vocal-samples and subtle synth-gimmicks. It’s a very exclusive soundtrack for a nighttime-walk along the outskirts.

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