Burial's 2013 EP is a three-track gut punch that trades the neon-lit streets of Untrue for something more intimate and confrontational. Dedicated to a friend transitioning, it's as much about identity and acceptance as it is about crackling drums and angelic vocal samples. Essential listening for anyone who thinks electronic music can't break your heart.
Burial had been quiet for six years. Not silent — he had a split with Four Tet and a few remixes — but the kind of quiet that makes you wonder if the voice that invented a new language for electronic music had simply said everything it needed to say.
Then Rival Dealer arrived on Hyperdub in December 2013, and it wasn’t a return to form. It was a form nobody had heard yet.
Three tracks, nearly thirty-one minutes. The title track opens with a spoken sample from a TV program about prejudice and bullying: “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” The voice is trembling. The next ten minutes are a slow-motion avalanche of shimmering synths, ghostly vocal cuts, and a beat that feels like it’s holding itself together with sheer will. Burial doesn’t just produce here — he conducts a séance.
“Hiders” follows, the shortest track at seven minutes. It’s the closest to his earlier work, a lovers’ lament buried in tape hiss and rain-splattered distortion. But even here, something has shifted. The track doesn’t resolve. It just fades into the same static it came from.
Then “Come Down to Us” — seventeen minutes if you include the hidden ambient piece at the end — and this is where Burial drops the mask completely. A gospel choir emerges from the murk, lifted from a 1980s TV broadcast. The drums are sparse, almost hesitant. And then, near the end, a voice: “This is my life. Don’t mess with it.” It’s a sample from a documentary about a transgender man. Burial dedicated the EP to a friend who was transitioning, and he said in rare interviews that he wanted to make something that felt like “the sun coming through the clouds.”
He wasn’t exaggerating.
The production is gloriously messy — not the pristine micro-edits of Untrue, but something rawer, more spontaneous. The vinyl pressing (essential, if you can find it) has a surface noise that melds with Burial’s own intentional crackle until you can’t tell where the record ends and the room begins. Listen on headphones, preferably after midnight. The low end is loose and physical; the highs are smeared into a blur.
Some fans were baffled at the time. Others wept. A decade later, Rival Dealer sounds less like an EP and more like a mission statement. Burial had always been about isolation, but here he reaches outward. It’s the sound of someone saying, I see you. I’m here too.
The last minute of “Come Down to Us” is just wind, or maybe it’s the needle in the run-out groove. Either way, take a long silence before you get up.
🎵 Key Takeaways
- Title track uses a trembling voice repeating 'it's okay'
- 'Hiders' fades into static without resolving its lament
- 'Come Down to Us' samples a gospel choir from 1980s TV
- Burial dedicated the EP to a friend who was transitioning
- Production is rawer and more spontaneous than Untrue
- Vinyl surface noise blends with Burial's intentional crackle
Is Rival Dealer an album or an EP?
It's officially an EP — three tracks, about 31 minutes — but many fans treat it as a fully realized album. Burial calls it a 'three-track thing'.
What samples are used on Rival Dealer?
Burial pulls from a TV documentary on transgender lives (especially 'Come Down to Us'), a 1980s gospel choir broadcast, and the speech from an anti-bullying program. He never clears samples, which is why it's never been properly reissued.
Why did Burial stop releasing music for six years before this?
He has always been reclusive and works slowly. The pressure following Untrue made him withdraw. Rival Dealer was recorded in a burst of inspiration after a personal friend came out as transgender, and he wanted to make something defiant and hopeful.