My Body Dissolves as I Watch and Dissolve sounds alot like that period where, after a long night spent exploring your inner psyche with psychedelics, you re-enter yourself while old horror movies and Unsolved Mysteries episodes play along in the background, the light of the television the only illumination in a room otherwise devoid of light. In short, my early 20’s in a nutshell. Burial Grid’s newest release carries on their tradition of doom-laden electronic music heavily influenced by the atmosphere of horror films from the ’70s and ’80s, while utilizing samples to blend in familiarity with the unknown. My Body Dissolves as I Watch and Dissolve manages to evoke almost the entire range of emotion, like anything truly involving psychedelics should and ultimately will. First we’re drawn in with the almost light-hearted “Blinking Heads in Baskets”, a track that recalls some of the Unsolved Mysteries vibes I mentioned above. It’s that first tickle of something strange that crawls up your spine after you dose and feels almost like an offering from the artist; a way to acclimate yourself to the darker things this album has waiting for you, its semi-upbeat nature and faintly nostalgic samples providing something almost but not quite familiar you can grab a hold of before exploring what comes next. The next track, “White Tunnel/Black Tunnel”, is that part of the trip where you start to notice things in the corner of your vision that aren’t necessarily there or what they seem to be, as your self starts to release from it’s self-made prison. Phaser heavy bass guides you through this little glimpse of the your own personal Dark Night of the Soul. Like any journey through the darkness, we’re guided to the light again with the next track “Voids”. The most vocal heavy track on the album, Distorted and sad yet hopeful vocals guide us through a track that I’d say is the most hopeful of the album, even though it’s isn’t necessarily a happy song. As is the case with almost all the songs on this album, a driving bass beats at its heart while more delicate instrumentation swirls around it, drifting in and out as necessary. “Unwilling Spectator” on the other hand is when the full on ego-death kicks in, a true kaleidoscope dive into the darkest parts of the mind. As Burial Grid mentioned in our premiere of the track, they had taken hallucinogens during “a bout of severe, ceaseless, seemingly causeless depression” and that feeling bleeds through your speakers with palpable rawness. “Every Color All At Once” ends the trip, again featuring a vocal track and acting as a gentle comedown from the rest of the album. This is that part of the trip where you slowly come back into yourself, exhausted but wiser for all that you’ve experienced of yourself.
If you’re looking for an album to party to, My Body Dissolves as I Watch and Dissolve might not be what you need right now. If however, you want some music that will take you on a crushing, hope-tinged journey to the centre of your mind then you’ll probably want to add this one to the shortlist of albums to check out. You can pre-order a copy over on Burial Grid’s bandcamp.My Body Dissolves as I Watch and Dissolve will be released on March 22, 2019.
-Scott
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