In 2007, Burial (aka William Bevan) imagined the likely soundscape after the collapse of known civilization. Since we will probably form roving tribes of warring hunter, Burial imagines a futuristic war drum tricked out with metallic edges. The drums, programmed to beat in the dark of the night, will rally the warriors for blood. The only vocal arrangements that can be utilized are fragments of lost culture. The surviving shards are digitally woven into the spaces between the dubbed-out beats. The last music on earth, created by those standing on the very edge of a dark precipice, will probably sound a lot like Burial's Untrue.
But what if we make it? What if we stave off the cannibals and the disease and all forms of garishly mechanized death? What does our music sound like then? Four Tet's "Angel Echoes" posits just such a miraculous survival. A bass drum and a hi-hat amble along in 4/4 while faint digital fairies flutter around the mix. Soon a voice rises out of the background, even more fragmented than anything Burial has worked with. But it doesn't sound like the cadence of a futuristic funeral dirge. The voice and its accompanying bells shrug off Burial's incessant grays in favor of color: red and orange and gold and yellow.
You can buy Four Tet's latest album There is Love In You here.
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