Burial – Rival Dealer

Um, Will goes in several directions with this one. It's OK.

Recommend.

My favorite Burial release. Love the story telling in this album. Such an emotional piece of art.

I listen to this EP on the bus and it makes me forget I’m on the bus

Absolutely great EP sound-wise, but this press is dogshit, as is the case with all other Hyperdub plates I own (Rashad Double Cup and Untrue 2019 Re-Issue). Distortion, loss of high end, and completely destroyed stereo field compared to the digital release.

I have a Rival Dealer LP with a completely different format
I ordered it through Bandcamp but cant find it anywhere else -
it has an off pattern and different lettering

it's 2020 and I still get chills when I hear "I'M GONNA LOOOOOOOOOVE YOU MOOARRR THAN ANYOOooOOOooooNE". Rival Dealer is the banger that keeps on banging.

The more I listen to it, the more I like it.

Hopefully music is not about execution only, either you feel it, either you do not :-)

"this is not about sexuality / execution, this is about who you are / what you feel when you listen to it" :-)

Oh boys, what a masterpiece. This is not club music, this is not garage, it's music for a movie with no pictures, where garage and grime mingle together to form the soundtrack for a story taking place in the street of modern London, the living part of it. Highly recommended.

"Come down to us " Is the most emotional, inventive and clever pieces of music I've heard in a very long time.
I've been listening to Ambient/breaks/leftfield/hip hop for about 25 years, but this blew my mind.

I'm revising my review from a few years ago, which was a snap judgement on my part in that I had only heard the titular track at the time of writing. That song, "Rival Dealer," is very good and was very much in line with what I was expecting to hear from Burial at the time. However, a lot of what happened on the rest of the EP was a big reason why I've found myself listening to less and less Hyperdub releases; with the one notable exception being the footwork producers they've signed in recent years (i.e. the Teklife crew).

This is obviously a personal preference, but a lot of the reason I listen to electronic music is because I want to be sent to a place completely detached of all socio-political overtones. It's one thing if its an expected (an often welcome) consequence of listening to the artist; a great example is Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or any of the countless politically vocal punk bands of the 80s and 90s. On the other hand, with a producer like Burial who's known for developing a sound that's timeless in all occasions, this was a bit unexpected and disappointing. I really do appreciate what he was trying to do here, but it almost seems like he was trying to use an emotionally charged social issue as a substitute for his trademark production skill.

There's a reason why nobody's really talking about this record any more, yet albums like Untrue, and even singles like Nova are still getting played on radio stations and showing up in the occasional DJ set. Burial took an opportunity for short-lived positive recognition from the likes of Pitchfork, rather than testing the boundaries of his musical expertise.