For the majority of its run time, burial plot is a gentle, minimalist dark ambient horror album, well suited for contemplative work in a dark room.
Traditional ambient music, in the sense of ambient legend Brian Eno
"...must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting"
Only occasionally punctuated with moments demanding your attention, burial plot lives in a space just tangential to this traditionalist ethos but firmly under the broader modern ambient umbrella.
The album opens with dark haunting creature noises and bells, as if straight from the soundtrack of a short horror film. Most of what follows however, is comparatively gentle. Soft static, ethereal dissonance, shimmering piano textures, and substantial use of reverb. I feel as though I'm walking through a misty pine forest somehow equally devoid of warmth as it is of coldness. There's a timeless quality, neither pushing you forward nor pulling you back.
The calm is only occasionally punctuated with stark moments of contrast. Something strikes as if to wake me up in the event I had drifted to sleep. A Japanese vocal sample plays before a loud bang (this album is not suitable for bedtime).
Later in track 8, Dissection, I find myself in an abandoned church, ringing with the haunting sounds of a long forgotten choir. Towards the end, we find mostly soft gentle textures crafting a pensive atmosphere, still occasionally punctuated with moments of concern like the sudden explosions of a beating heart in track 12, fittingly titled Pulse.
Taken as a complete work, burial plot is perfectly suited for active listening, contemplative work, or a midnight stroll through a graveyard.
...
At least this is the review I wanted to give. In reality, the situation is more complicated. This brings our attention to track 9, catatonia, a well crafted work of dark atmospheric jungle/drum and bass. This is a radical departure from the rest of the album. Loud drum breaks dominate the atmosphere, layered underneath sweeping bitcrushed textures. The dark reverb is still present, but the gentle contemplation is replaced wholesale with aggressive energy. The track temporarily fades back to that dark ambience before returning to the looped drum break, now slower and layered with chopped vocals and grotesque grunts.
I like this track a lot. I want to be totally clear. But I'm genuinely mystified as to its inclusion on this album. It's obviously intentional. It blends in too well to be some kind of oversight. The artist wanted me to hear this, but I couldn't tell you why.
With this track included, burial plot is still absolutely worth listening to. Just be prepared for a brief detour into the jungle.