- There’s something uncanny in how William Bevan, aka Burial, manages to leap from pinnacle to pinnacle of the zeitgeist, appearing with another fifteen minutes worth of cheesy dance, vandalised by fuzzy, aural steel wool, leaving behind these scarred monuments, ruined visages that everyone adores. Just how does he do it? I’m not entirely sure that I always know, but in this instance at least, it’s relatively easy to observe that trends in the world of dance - the continuing house and techno revival - are almost making things too easy for the rave obsessed Burial.

Rival Dealer’s three cuts continue his trend into longform work. Beginning with its eleven minute title-track which mixes up his most explicit reproduction of 90’s rave yet with a relentless UK garage beat. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had an insatiable appetite for garage in the last couple of years. Disclosure’s little forays are not quite cutting it. When that beat opened up, I was just about ready to give the whole EP a free-pass; I’ll try and contain my bias. On top of the beat, Burial borrows from singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw via a little known youtube diva, stealing his saccharine refrain and sequencing it here, adnauseum. The song takes an abrupt and furious turn into a scouring bass pattern which slams along until the song burns itself out, fading back into the omnipresent atmosphere.

Hiders takes a shimmering synth melody and, out of the haze and rain sound effects, pairing it with an unsubtle electro beat. Closer, Come Down To Us takes two more on a similar theme, at first marrying a synth-pop melody to bass heavy hiphop, then folding into an upbeat dance anthem with electric piano ringing like bells.

Burial’s long songs are, in some important ways, not actually that long: both of the quarter hour bookends of the EP are conjoined pairs of less than half that length. It seems to be a product of an almost random framing, an organisational logic not easily understood. It extends right down to the level of individual samples: repeatedly throwing in things like the sound of a tape-deck being loaded, random hits of turntablism or the squawk of a police dispatcher.

Sometimes it seems mystifying, but on Rival Dealer there is an obvious intent, most easily understood from its spoken-word vocal samples. Little snatches like This is who I am, or I will always protect you and Don’t be afraid to step into the unknown. Most explcity is this final, touching borrow from filmmaker Lana Wachowski: Without examples, without models, I began to believe voices in my head: that I was a freak, that I was broken, that I will never be loveable; years later I find the courage to admit that I am transgendered and this does not mean that I am unloveable; so this world that we imagine in this room, might be used to gain access to other rooms; other worlds, previously unimagineable. The whole of Rival Delaer is a 3am expression of what it is to be LGBT, and the world of possibility that dance music has shared with it: the sadness, darkness, cheese and transcendent eurphoria that Burial is still investigating.

- Chris Cobcroft.