Best New Tracks - Pitchfork

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Burial: "Come Down to Us" Posted: 12 Dec 2013 10:22 AM PST Over six years have passed since Burial's Untrue, and since then he's expanded his vision over a series of EPs and collaborative works. He's often stretched his sound out into 10-minute-plus segments on those EPs, a length he reaches for again on "Come Down to Us". It utilizes some of the same samples as the prior "Hiders", and even loops back to "Loner" from last year's Kindred EP, which uses the same snatch of dialogue ("There's something out there"). The beginning resembles something like an alien torch song, with familiarly wobbly vocal passages set to a beautifully sluggish rhythm. From there it heads into the stratosphere, dipping into moody slow-drag atmospherics and reaching an icy pop high in its center. "Come Down to Us" tackles identity and loss, ending with Burial's most overtly political statement yet, via a speech from the 2012 Human Right Campaign gala by transgender filmmaker Lana Wachowski. The wild shifts in tone of the track form an appropriate mirror to the contrasting mood of the vocal snippets, which range from optimism ("You are not alone") to a quite disturbing degree of despair ("Excuse me, I'm lost," a scared, lonely voice intones). It's all executed with layer upon layer of sampled noise, providing a depth that makes it feel like you've barely scratched the surface even after countless plays.