How Burial’s recent EP helped me connect to my grief

There is a certain irony in William Bevan’s alias; the ceremonious concealment of physical life. Burial’s Antidawn ventures through faint hints of reality, betrayed only by breaks of silence and vinyl crackle that speak for the music not really existing in the present. There is a sense of missing in the EP, that the ambient-electronic crossover lacks sufficient structure and musical trappings to deem itself “music”. But this is exactly what makes it special – moonstruck vocal cuts, dislocated harmonies, and variegated textures align to create a sonic no-man's-land. Functioning as both a luscious backdrop to mundanity and an insightful omphalos for attentive listening, it guides the listener through a wiry journey of decontextualised sounds, lying somewhere between noise and music, a dream and a nightmare, melancholy and joy, reality and fiction. At times glistening with soul, at times drenched in portentous mechanical noise. 

I recently wrote an email to Hyperdub, thanking them for Burial’s new release and noting the record being published roughly three weeks after my step-dad, R., passed away. The EP has given me the space to navigate my feelings without telling me what I should be feeling. No emotion is obvious in the record but, for me, it has an overtone of loss. I’m not the first to attach such meaning to Burial’s work. I’m predated by Mark Fisher, who writes in 2006 on his blog k-punk that Burial’s self-titled debut 

is very London Now - which is to say, it suggests a city haunted not only by the past but by lost futures. It seems to have less to do with a near future than with the tantalising ache of a future just out of reach.

Burial’s tunes are more than just ghostly atmospherics, they represent “the failure of the future”. In his article “What Is Hauntology?” Fisher describes the failure of 21st century music to deliver on sonic progression; writing that “Electronic music [has] succumbed to its own inertia and retrospection.” Leave it to Burial, the transcendent orator of contemporary cultural lassitude, to guide us through this impasse.

Antidawn is a translucent window into the grieving soul, blemished only to those yet to experience loss. The confusion of grief is mirrored by Burial’s disjointed assemblage of sound. Grief makes sense in a way that cannot be explained; it is the emotional boundary between reality and the supernatural.

At the midpoint of the closing track, Upstairs Flat, a warm, melancholic passage is brought to its grizzly, unforgiving crescendo, eventually releasing its harsh grip and reintroducing a mercy of stillness. My grief journey has been accompanied by streams of calm, only to be caught up in a whirlpool of sorrow and fear once again. I am writing this from R’s desk chair, the same chair I write everything from. As I was writing an essay, my hand drifted to a joiner that connected the back rest to the seat. As my fingers graced across the cold metal, I touched some dust. I remember reading years ago that dust was (partially) composed of dead skin cells. I figured that at least some of these would be R’s. In that moment, I paused and stared blankly at my computer screen, bewildered by momentary contact with his physical being. I was in an inescapable daze, and my clumsy attempt to reengage with my work was polluted with brain fog. Fear and sorrow had besieged me. 

Antidawn is a patchwork of emotion, weaving through a menagerie of loss, fear, desolation, and reflection. The opening track, Strange Neighbourhood, enigmatically states “you came around my way”, followed by a later voice describing “walking through the streets” with “nowhere to go”. The album concludes as mysteriously as it began, with a dark voice pleading “come get me”. The lyrics ring of an ephemeral relationship, a fleeting individual that the protagonist is desperately searching for. This is present in my loss, the ambivalent searching with no end; glancing at photographs for a hint of R’s presence, hearing a song that I think he would like, knocking on the door and expecting him to answer it. There is a feeling of unfinished business, that there is more that needs to be attended to. And it may have been attended to, if only we were awarded the gift of time. But, in lieu of time, Antidawn’s narrator keeps searching, grasping for their evanescent visitor’s return.

I would be remiss without revisiting Burial’s old work. Namely, Archangel. Made in the wake of his dog’s death, Bevan’s well-beloved tune saturates R&B vocal chops with syncopated drums and withering pads, sprinkling Metal Gear Solid samples throughout. The lyrics “holding you”, “couldn’t be alone”, “loving you”, and “tell me I belong” loop into a threnody that mourns being cared for through the process of caring. Solicitude is where our protagonist finds meaning, where they find belonging. It is not only the loss of a loved one that must now be contended with, but the loss of one’s place in the world. Whether spending time with people who haven’t been through it, walking past in-tact couples with their children, or skipping past a film about a dad and his son, I’ve felt alienated in my grief. I exist in a world that isn’t built for me, like a shark in a pond. In his seminal breakbeat requiem, Burial wraps an understanding blanket around the lost, the fearful, and the inconsolable. 

A Genius annotation says Burial’s archangel is watching over its subject; a loving, protective, and assuring force. Perhaps this is true, but when I think of the archangel Azrael, the angel responsible for carrying the deceased’s soul to the afterlife, the tune takes on a new meaning. Perhaps Archangel imagines death not in its end state, but in its transference; in the soul’s movement from reality to the supernatural plane. 

The dreamlike quality of Burial’s music comes from this in-between stage – the state between being lost and being found. There is no beginning or end to his stories, but a circuitous middle, pirouetting around itself with little direction. The final few minutes of Shadow Paradise demonstrates this at it’s best, with shadowy vocal samples swimming beneath found sound being fired at the listener from all directions. The occasional harmony is scattered throughout, disappearing and reemerging, drifting in and out of the foley-laden foreground. These elements are combined on this track and throughout the EP to create cinematic liminal atmospheres. Lyrics cyclically repeat themselves across the EP’s tracklisting; Antidawn is never a progressive story in the classic sense. Grief is liminal – a shift from something bad happening to moving on from it. But, from what I’ve read at least, we never simply move on from it. It moves with us. This is rather daunting, walking along a path with no end. But the companionship of Burial’s music soothes my journey.

In the run-up to my step-dad’s funeral I was petrified. Me, my brother, and my sister walked up to enter the crematorium together. But as we approached the doors, I released the grip from my brother’s hand, betraying the emotional support I was obliged to give him. I was physically incapable of going inside, unable to accept the reality of my front-row at the funeral. As the service went on, I was either crying or shaking my head. The inevitability of death is something we understand intellectually, but emotionally its permanence is difficult to accept. This emotional issue is even more difficult with an untimely death. We are burdened with temporal expectations, and the destruction of these expectations begets denial. R. died at the age of 36, survived by my mum, me, my 20-year-old sister, and his 5-year-old son. The promise of life’s wonders—seeing one’s children grow up and start lives of their own and growing old with the person one loves—was broken. His future, and mine by extension, was lost.

I may never find my way through the labyrinth of grief. My emotions may be too tangled up in confusion to ever “get over it”. But in Antidawn, my confusion is heard. My lost futures are somewhere in the distance, quietly careening behind a foreground of wreckage.

Words by Ethan Armon, an MSc Political Theory student with a passion for writing, philosophy, and electronic music.