Burr Oak - Somewhere We Belong [Eatbrain]

Welcome to my fifteenth album write-up! I apologize in advance for the wall of text that is about to follow. Scroll down for a TL;DR on the LP.

Background

The endless Struggle, the Odyssey through inadequate releases from other artists, the Nightmare that has been My Life without it, it all comes to an end today. Following a trail of musical output that can only be described as Bestial and mercilessly teased for so long that the almost excrutiating levels of hype for it has even become the subject of numerous memes, "the new Burr Oak album" has been heralded as a future AOTY contender for quite some time now.

Now that the Time Has (finally, actually, for realsies even) Come, let's take a deeper look into the culmination of a combined fourty years of experience in music production. Will it be a Departure from their usual style? Or are they sticking to their Roots? Will it be so good that Neurofunk becomes Illegal, since we have clearly reached its final form? Or will it be so bad that The Sky Darkens and The World's Spark is fully extinguished, sparking a new Dark Age in which No Light Will ever Shine On? Fire up the Popcorn Machine, make sure you stretch appropriately and move fragile objects out of your way, we're (probably, hopefully) about to go full Barbarian over here. Or should I say, Bar-Burr(Oak)ian?

Before we do that though, let's first untangle their enormous web of musical ventures and aliases, shall we?

1. Julien Carbou

To keep things a bit more focused, let's start with just one half of the prolific French duo: Julien Carbou!

1.1. The Early Julien Catches The Carbounara (1981 - 2008)

This particular story begins in the deepest corners of Southeastern France, where little Julien was born and raised. Right from an early age, he has been a very musically curious person, effortlessly swinging from one vine in the rich jungle of music to another. During these formative years, he swung from the classics like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to artists practicing the dark magic of harder Rock variants like Iron Maiden and Sepultura. At the same time, a friend of his introduced him to the wonders of Hip-Hop, so Wu Tang's Method Man and Redman also entered the playlists of the Carbou household, but Punk and Metal were still very much Julien's favourites. So much so, that he started playing the guitar himself and eventually even joined a band!

Towards the end of the 90s, Julien was slowly but surely transitioning over to more electronic sounds though. The very first step on this musical awakening, as he calls it, came in the form of his friend giving him a mixtape of UK-based hard techno collective Spiral Tribe, which basically positively blew his mind. Shortly after, he began going to free not-quite-legal raves near him, which turned out to be a hugely effective fertilizer for this budding love for all things electronic. Not only did he discover how wonderful this kind of music could be in a live setting, he was also deeply fascinated by the DIY aspect of it all, from the intricacies of DJing to all the hardware involved in setting up a party in the first place. With the likes of SP23, Sound Conspiracy and The Prodigy now dominating his personal rotations, you would think the jump to DnB would happen not long after, but even after having caught Congo Natty & Aphrodite on the airwaves a couple of times and his friends Agro Twins starting to play around with the genre, he still preferred his fours neatly placed on the floor.

Flash-forward to 2005. Julien was hanging out in his usual skate spot, when another good friend of his came running, urging him to listen to something. That something? The Tide, from Dutch masterminds Noisia. Yet another musical awakening! In the following years, Julien would go from loving the Do-It-Yourself aesthetic of it all to actually doing it himself, by launching The Phat Riderz with his friend Ryos in 2006. It wasn't necessarily DnB that peaked their interest though, these particularly phat riderz were more fascinated by all things Electro and Breakbeat. Anything Phat, really. After carving out a little niche for themselves on labels like Break-Bots, Fresh Produce and Empathy in these first few years, their repertoire also expanded into what you could reasonably call Neurofunk towards the end of the project's lifespan, exemplified best by the aptly-titled Heaven Massacre. Just as break-heavy as you might expect from the title. It was time for some solo action though.

1.2. Claéw Markz (2008 - 2015)

2008 might have seen the end of the Phat Riderz, but as one project died, another one emerged, with a similarly youthful zpelling ztyle: Imprintz. While this new alias was technically just him on his (Julien Carb-)own, it basically became a Kloéllaborative one for the most part. Together with fellow Frenchie, scratch DJ and producer Kloé, he not only expanded upon his new-found love for DnB and more specifically Neuro with releases like the Till The End EP, they were also responsible for a regular stream of Electro/House/Electro House type bangers and sometimes even combined the multiple styles into one, like on Maximum! Speaking of, that multi-genre joyride was one of many collaborations with a young Xilent, who later went on to become one of Dubstep's biggest talents, with early support by the likes of John B and Neonlight. Over the years, the duo also bagged another few exciting collabs with Exorcist and Task Horizon, among their many solo and duo adventures.

Even though they were spanning their stylistic umbrella quite wide open, their productions were always top-notch, resulting in releases on all kinds of imprints (very much intended), including Mainframe, Ammunition and a whole lot more names that I am very unfamiliar with. After three full years of causing all kinds of carnage as Imprintz, however, a name you and I are very familiar with materialized in 2011: The Clamps! Named after an in-joke about how his hands are more like two mechanical clamps than normal human appendages, the project (of course!) started out full of crab imagery and word play in the beginning. As one of those people who have been holding up cardboard pincers at various festivals and spamming crab emotes in chat all throughout lockdown, going down this particular amazing (c)rabbit hole, stumbling upon titles like Way Of Crab, seeing the various cute crustaceans on his mix artworks and discovering he had a podcast series called Corals & Algae, was honestly the best thing ever.

After a bit more than a year of continuing to claw his way through the Electro House scene, he was peer-pressured by his friends Céline and Etienne to create something extra spicy for Kosenprod, the then-newly founded Bass-focused sister label of the bastion of all things Hardcore that is Karnage Records. Soon after, he would also be featured on other underground Neuro platforms like Disturbed or Dissected Culture, entered the Halo 4 remix competition (which I didn't even know was a thing) with a big break-and-bass-y banger and started uploading Neuro mixes. It wasn't just a time of Neuro exploration though, this time saw him spread out his claws further than ever before, rocking left-to-right from expansive Progressive Trance to Hardcore Karnage and even trying his pincers at Dubstep. Once 2014 rolled around, the DnB notably began to take over again though, with releases on Close 2 Death (more like Claws 2 Death), him being crowned one of the winners of Black Sun Empire's and Noisia's Hideous remix competition together with Redject, remixes for Forbidden Society and rising stars Opsen & Primary Theory and promo mixes for Neuro powerhouse collective Enter The Grid, formed by scene behemoths NeurofunkGrid and, of course, Kosen, with him as a major player.

What followed next, however, was what really put things into motion.

1.3. Nothing Left Toulouse (2015 - Now)

One fateful day, now Toulouse-based Julien sent a track he was particularly happy with to the demo box of Trendkill, home to all sorts of banging tunes from label founder Prolix and the likes of Gridlok, Mob Tactics and Misanthrop. A couple days later, Prolix, who had actually been one of Julien's main reference points when it came to DnB, responded and was so happy with what he heard, he signed this and a whole couple more tunes right away. Not just that, they also bonded over a shared taste in Rock music! In the same year, he not only released the first batch of demos as a triple single, it was also the year of the one and only Social Disorder EP. From there on out, one door after the other opened for him, leading to releases on Citrus, Audioporn and Invisible, remixes for Rusty K and Forbidden Society (again), and throughout this wondrous journey of DnB and Hardcore, he also came to the conclusion that it is finally time for something big: his debut album!

Released in 2018 on his home label Kosen, Odyssey took everything he had learned over the course of his journey so far and condensed it into a 15-track nuclear bomb of bangers, with features like Mizo, NickBee and Merikan aiding him on this trip. While Julien had acquired quite the ensemble of collaborators at this point, there was one that he had been itching to work with since way back in 2016: Opsen. In 2019, this year-long wish was finally fulfilled and their collaborative debut Interaction was released on Trendkill, supported by none other than BBC Radio 1! I'll get to why this is important in a little bit, don't worry. Sure, over the next couple years the following releases were mostly focused on the DnB aspect of this particular alias, with collaborators like Qo, Disaszt and even experimental Jazz musician and his actual cousin Thomas Carbou joining in on the fun, massive remixes for Zombie Cats and Rusty K (again) and the Neurofunk scene being heavily shaped by one ridiculous EP after the other on both Trendkill and Kosen, with the latter becoming more and more prominent in his discography.

While the The Clamps project only branched back out to Hardcore a couple of times these past few years, most notably for the 20 Years Of Karnage Anthem and a few TV-smashing collabs with STV, there was way more to Julien's musical output to explore. Between 2013 and 2015, Julien and his then-roommate Kim "Skimfish" "Kim Kong" Fisher started out as Techno duo Animals In Cage, which also found a home on Kosen! Julien eventually left the project, but Kim seemingly continued on solo until even that kind of dissolved around 2018. Kim is still active on SoundCloud though! Speaking of 2018: In the very same year Julien put out his debut album as The Clamps, fellow NHC Studios mastering wizard NickBee referred Yan "Deerhill" Hirschbuehl, who was working on visuals for him at the time, to him and, just like Nick predicted, they hit it off really well! Together, Yan and Julien launched Third Colony, their outlet for all things that you can't really classify with normal genres, in tandem with the label Third Colony Music, their and a load of other people's new playground for expressing themselves. As if that wasn't enough already, Julien also works as Kosenprod's and Karnage's A&R on the side!

Of course, there were a couple more projects I need to mention if I want to tell the whole story, but before we get to that, we need to talk about someone else first.

2. Nicolas Levy

Now that we have heard most of Julien's side of the story, let's flip the coin and talk about Nicolas "Niko" Levy.

2.1. Nico Nico Party Party (1988 - 2013)

Just like his later partner, Niko was heavily influenced by his family's musical tastes or, more specifically, his big brother's. When he was just a little 5-to-6-year-old, Niko received Nevermind by Nirvana from him, steering him down a path of hardcore, metal and generally all sorts of rock-y things. At first, he would play the drums for a couple of years, but soon enough, you could hear his angelic screaming (his words!) in a hardcore/metal band of his own. One fine summer in the early 2000s, when Niko was in Tignes taking part in a snowboarding camp, a few mates he had met there sat him down and showed him his very first Techno CD. While the specifics of which artist sealed the deal or which exact compilation it was were lost to time, the game-changing effect it had on him remained. As if he was trying to follow Julien's footsteps, he also attended his first free still-not-very-legal rave in the South East of France a couple of weeks later, which was also such a life-affirming, positively inspiring event for him that he became enamored with the electronic music scene as well.

In fact, this experience was so powerful that he swiftly sought out to buy his first drum machines and synthesizers, to put his own stamp on what he had heard. He already dabbled with Techno and its acidic cousin during this time, but from what I can tell, none of it ever ended up online. In 2011, he finally made the step from Nicoffline to Niconline with his brand new project, Disco BangerZ! Z's were just really popular at the time I guess. Kicked off with the appropriately-titled debut single "Fuck Off", you can already tell that this wonderfully-named project had a lot of youthful energy behind it. Often in (Ni)collaboration with Julien "Wobble Boy" Palasse, the Disco BangerZ sound is situated somewhere between Dubstep, Drumstep and Electro House, with releases on Best New Dubstep Label nominated Betamorph Recordings and, wouldn't you know it, Kosenprod! While he was already having quite the success with his bangerZ approach, playing everywhere from Paris to Prague, he, just like Julien, wanted to shed the Z in favour of something more modern and, unlike Julien, immediately wanted to go into a more DnB heavy direction.

2.2. All Signs Point To Opsenity (2013 - 2016)

For this new and exciting artistic endeavour, Niko decided on the name Opsen, which started seeing the light of day around 2013. After a whole 'nother bunch of (Ni)cooperations with Wobble Boy, or Primal Therapy as he came to be known from then on, and a couple solo tunes on the likes of You So Fat, Melting Pot and, how else could it ever be, Kosen, Niko was already on the cusp of something else entirely though. Well, not entirely, but I liked how dramatic it sounded. You see, Julien wasn't the only one he loved collaborating with, for quite some time the two were also trying to get DJing pioneer and good mate of theirs Lionel Le Lutin Goulpie involved in their shenanigans. One day, Lionel finally caved and went over to their studio space. Of course, he was loving what he was hearing and since none other than Cause4Concern's late, great Optiv was visiting in a few days, he suggested they whip up some fresh tunes to show him. Two tunes, not enough time to actually think of a name for themselves and a little backstage showcase later, and they were already signed to his label Red Light Records.

As anyone else would in this situation, they took this early endorsement as a sign from the Neurofunk gods that they should shift all their focus over to this promising new supergroup, which they eventually did, appropriately naming it Signs. Just in the first year, their baguette step could be heard on Red Light, Cause4Concern, Bad Taste and Vandal, with RAM, Eatbrain, Gridlok's Project 51, Ed Rush's Piranha Pool and, of course, Kosen following in the next one. Not only did they receive quite a lot of support from other DJs like Friction on BBC Radio 1 and Ed Rush on his Fabriclive mix, with a pioneer like Le Lutin on board, it was of course a given that their own DJing would pop off just as much! As part of the aforementioned Enter The Grid crew, they were shelling down bangers all over the continent, most notably at Let It Roll and guest mixes for big imprints like the now-defunct MethLab. What really made them stand out from a lot of their contemporaries, however, was their insane workrate. That list of labels I was rattling off? That was only like the first third of them all!

2.3. Niko Levy And The Half Time Princes (2016 - Now)

2016 wasn't just the Year Of The Compilations™️ for them, with entries on multi-artist EPs and LPs on Critical, Shogun, Vandal and Neosignal, it was also the year they embraced the slower, Hip-hop-slash-Halftime tempos they have all never really stopped loving, even though all this DnB madness. How did this come to be? Well, none other than Noisia reached out to them for some DnB tunage and, just to see what happens, the Signs bois poured Diesel, their very first Halftime tune, into that package of pure fire. The resulting inferno was so huge, the Dutch legends basically had no choice but to invite them spread their fire on VISION sublabel Division! While they would continue to put out Neuro on the likes of Kosen, Trendkill and NЁU, labels like Kinetic Records, OtherCide, SATURATE and especially Division became their safe haven for any BPM below the 100's.

All that, plus remixes for Current Value and Optiv & BTK, collaborations with fellow Frenchie Redeyes, uploads to UKF, further Radio 1 support via Rido (more like Ridio 1) and support from DMC world champion DJ Craze, the sky was basically the limit at this point. Of course, that still wasn't everything! They started cultivating their mixtape project #FollowTheSigns with appearances by Redeyes, HØST, Subp Yao and many more talents, created soundbanks for Fragment Audio and Xfer Serum, worked on music for media conglomerates like Warner and even did some occasional ad work.

Even though the project's vital signs all seemed to be at a more than healthy level, behind the scenes each of the members were working more and more on their solo projects until the trio finally formally announced their split up with a huge interview on UKF and an even huger final piece of music, their Naegleria EP on Division in 2019. Primal Therapy went on to try his hand at a solo project called Ypno and a collaborative one with July Diggerz, aptly called Diggerz. Niko basically went back to his Opsen project, but also continued working with Le Lutin on all sorts of Halftime and murky foghorn DnB type beats as Cecil Hotel on labels like Flexout, ProgRAM and Sofa Sound.

Obviously I'm leaving out a big one though. Yes, it's finally time.

3. Collaburroaktive Efforts (2019 - Now)

You see, Niko actually never really had to go without a fellow Julien by his side! After getting in touch with each other through Kosenprod label manager Céline, him and Julien Clamps were dying to work together for years and in 2019, they finally managed to put their heads together for not just one, but actually two massive projects: Forum, their lush-liquid-and-bombastic-brrr's project with Vandal Records owner Julien "SKS" Despiau (yes, another Julien) with releases on Vandal, ProgRAM and Subtitles, and, of course, the name we have all been waiting for, Burr Oak.

As you can tell from the artworks, the name Forum was born out of their shared love for Roman architecture, so did Burr Oak come about because they love trees? Not quite. While working on one of their infamously heavy basses, they suddenly started hearing the phrase "Walnut Grove" in it, which was where American Western historical drama “The Little House on the Prairie”, one of their favourite shows growing up, took place! They started reading up on the probably extremely extensive lore of the series and read that the Ingalls family, i.e. the main characters, moved to a place in Iowa called Burr Oak (spoilers!), named after a type of oak that Native Americans relied heavily on and even considered sacred. Since they liked the sound of the name and had always been deeply interested in old Western movies and Native American culture, it was a perfect choice.

In mid-2019 they started planting their seeds of cinematic destruction with a series of singles back on Prolix's Trendkill, but soon enough, it was time to ravage the scene with incredible EP after incredible EP. While already quite humongous in nature, it was Hawkeye, their debut EP on Jade's legendary Neurofunk label Eatbrain, that showed the world the true power of the Burr Oak. With a well thought-out story framework based on the Westerns they grew up on, stunning accompanying artworks by Eatbrain's incredibly talented László Tringli and the two talents themselves singing for the first time, this was a real milestone in the evolution of Burr Oak as we know it today. Over the following years, the world has been blessed with further, equally if not more insane releases on Blackout (including my personal Best Of 2022, Shinigami with Billain), Rampage and Eatbrain, remixes for Noisia and Gydra and a collaboration with Blackout bosses Black Sun Empire.

2022 was also when the journey to their biggest, in all senses of the word, project yet began: Their debut album. Let's not beat around the bush any longer, let's do this!

Resources

Track Breakdown

You have already heard notorious gunslingers Scruggs & Sonny Jim battling against the very Roots Of Evil themselves and rode alongside them through a strange land stuck in the Dark Ages, now we once again join them on their journey to the legendary Burr Oak. Every now and then, I will try to fuse some parts of the incredibly detailed stories Julien, Niko and Eatbrain's very own, super talented storywriter Gwen Kubik have come up with into the text, but I highly recommend also seeking out the full stories for yourself. They're brilliant!

1. Far From Home

It's easy to see why the album opener Far From Home was long rumoured to be an official remix of Noisia's Could This Be, as it's actually the result of Julien and Niko trying to emulate some of the most iconic tracks of the early inspirations that the Dutch Neuro supergroup has been for them. Thanks to a healthy dose of their patented Burr Oak goodness™️, including both of them lending their voices for the very first time, it has absolutely become its own thing in the process though. In this far away land, our two gauchos cautiously trot further towards the distant behemoth of a tree, while a strange, menacing presence is already making itself known. They reach a point of peace and quiet, but this will soon prove to be the deceiving calm before the storm, as the massive basses begin to rear their heads again with new-found speed and aggressiveness just a couple moments later. Already a ridiculous intro, with so many twists and turns I'm surprised Scruggs & Sonny didn't get lost in it.

2. Symbolic (Visualiser)

Further down the road, they encounter a strange monument of a long-forgotten civilization, only recently laid bare after the enourmous glacier enclosing it for centuries had thawed away. As soon as it became visible on the horizon, a deeply disturbing war cry flashed through our two heroes' bodies, shaking them (and us) to their very core. The closer they got, the more of this construct's features began to surface, from all sorts of symbols from a bygone era to a pair of wolves sleeping at its base. Suddenly, the inscribed runes began to glow, causing the valley around it to violently shake, trapping both our cowboys and the twain wolves in its spell. We become witnesses to a vicious back-and-forth between sliced-up emotional outcries and a monstrous roaring response, which is absolutely bonkers, even for Burr Oak's already insane standards. You think it's over just like that? Hah! The second phase sees every fiber of our being rearranged into little bits and pieces by an incredibly break-heavy syncopation overload, until they are all grinded up into dust, eventually resulting in the collapse of this plane of existence we are wandering on. That's what it feels like at least.

3. Broken Bonds

Long long ago, way before Scruggs & Sonny stumbled upon this monument, the bond between man and nature was ripped apart, leaving the world behind in emotional distress. On our third stop, Julien and Niko now show us the traumatic aftermath of this pivotal event in time, with a relatively timid, heartfelt arrangement. In finest Depeche Mode fashion, with an extra dose of wonderful frenchness, they take us on a journey through pulsating distortion, frustrated feelings of resignation and all sorts of bleeps and bloops moving about. The longer this pain lingers, the harsher it gets, resulting in more aggressive distortion and, as if their performance wasn't already delightful enough, another very computeristic, high-pitched vocal layer behind the main chorus joining in on the fun, resulting in a truly unique multi-layered experience.

4. L'Effondrement

As the spellbinding process of the monument unfolds, we continue to explore the world and the backstory behind it, this time focussing on the inciting incident, the collapse, or l'effondrement, as they would call it on Julien's and Niko's inspiration for the tune Attack on Titan. Unlike what you might expect from my intro here, they depicted the collapse as less of an explosive blink-and-you-miss-it moment and more of a slow decay. Alien-sounding voices immediately put you at unease, before a relentless machine starts ploughing away at the foundation you're standing on. Over time, the earth begins to bellow back at its aggressors, with shiver-inducing growls from below, but the machines just keep on going until eventually the creaking and howling becomes almost unbearable.

5. Twain Wolves

Or should I say, un-wolf-able? Now that we know that the collapse was a slow yet ultimately catastrophic event, it's time to find out more about the Twain Wolves. You see, back in the day, these beasts could wreak absolute havoc on anyone who would aggrevate them. At first, they might only grumble at you, but if you kept going, they would unleash utter, earth-shattering hell. While one of them would bark at you with the force of a thousand suns, paralysing you in a state of endless waking nightmares, the other would pounce right at you so swiftly you won't stand a single chance. Even if you somehow managed to escape, their otherworldly influence will result in the strongest of heart palpitations throughout the whole chase, until you are right back in the horrifying fight. Incredible tune honestly.

6. No One Is Innocent

After digesting this first stop on their journey, our cowboy protagonists venture further into the Forbidden West, where they encounter a newly blooming civilization living with the old culture's technological marvels and artifacts. However, as they learn more about their daily life one thing becomes clear: the same slow, insidiously destructive process that we learned about in L'Effondrement is happening again. We are all responsible for this scourge on the world. No One Is Innocent. Here we see (or hear) how the rave generation, with its youthful energy and anti-establishment attitude, represented by an acidic 4x4 buildup full of protest chants, can no longer just stand there and instead starts an all-out war against the oppression. Even though the fast-moving mechanical stomping, with truly angry distorted basslines interjecting, seems to have done some damage, it apparently wasn't enough, so they step it up another level in the second half. A somehow even more hype, pounding acid beat builds itself up to ridiculous levels, until the pent-up energy is set loose all at once, leading to full-on hostile reese basses and increasingly escalating sirens causing utter chaos in the streets.

7. Running Next To The Bison

Fed up with the world, we tune our radio to a new station, only to be met with the same existential dread. We switch channels. "People getting sick, losing their jobs". Switch. A new climate change report. Switch. Oh, it's the classic theme song of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, with our heroes Running Next To The Bison! Before we can actually get our heart rate down with some good ol' escapism, however, we are thrown right back into the chaos, with nerve-racking, ever-increasing melodies on top of incredibly weighty hits leading us to the the absolute heaviest, steppiest drops of the album so far. Minimal in its arrangement, with only the barest minimum of drums and the funky flow leaving a lot of space between each hit, but absolutely maximal in the execution, we basically have no choice but to nod along to it. However, the longer it goes on, the more nastiness creeps into the gaps, until it becomes a cacophony of the most eldritch horror sounds you can imagine. In the best way possible!

8. Go or Get Shot (feat. TheReal King Jay)

On their train further towards the blasphemed temple at the heart of this wretched land, Scruggs & Sonny are suddenly stopped in their tracks by sheer endless masses of disfigured creatures threatening them to either Go or Get Shot. Missouri-based rapper TheReal King Jay provides the wonderfully vibey response, a mixture of confusion and acceptance of the situation they are finding themselves in, before we launch into one of the calmest Burr Oak drops so far. Since the topic is aggression, however, things of course start to escalate rather quickly, going from almost ethereal beauty to a wall of pure bass, violently shoving the waves of enemies back to where they came from. Never has a brawl against alien beings sounded so beautiful!

9. Ring The Death Knell

Finally having arrived at the forsaken temple, our cowboys eagerly step through its massive door, revealing all sorts of large statues, murals and... hordes of mechanical beasts, which do not want them there. They knew they had to react fast if they didn't want the Death Knell to ring for them, so without further hesitation, they threw a wad of TNT into the crowd and started blasting away with their trusty revolvers. With extra fonky, bouncy basslines reminiscent of Hawkeye, but with additional screechy heaviness and a rather explosive foghorn sprinkled in, and with a ton of the best bone-breaking, head-crushing and face-slapping samples from the legendary Terence Hill & Bud Spencer movies, they once again laid waste to them all, allowing them to make their way further into the temple.

10. Supreme Entity

Inside, they stumble upon a gargantuan monument majestically rising up from the ground, glistening in the sun shining in from outside. As Scruggs & Sonny attempt to make sense of the cryptic inscriptions etched into its surface, they found themselves in an seemingly endless room above the clouds all of a sudden. A plant-based creature vaguely resembling a humanoid started emerging from their surroundings, with everything shaking so uncontrollably that every fiber of their being was at risk of being torn apart. Towering over our heroes, the creature reveals itself to be the Supreme Entity. They attempt to escape this hellscape, but their surroundings just kept on growling and clawing them right back to where they started. With a glitchy, distorted force none of them have ever experienced before, the Entity unveils its plan to mend the broken world once and for all: The Burr Oak.

11. Uno (Visualiser)

As the Supreme Entity Uno reveals more about its plan and how the Burr Oak came to be in the first place, our handsomely hatted heroes gradually realise that this is turning out to be more sinister than they could have imagined. However, their dissenting thoughts are promptly and sharply cut off by a maniacal laughter, followed by Uno telling them off with a self-assured No, no, no. They try to fight with all their might and tons of sound effects, but Uno just clinically starts firing off all of its mind-bending mental weaponry, leaving little to no room for their own thoughts. For a while it tolerates this little back and forth, but at some point, it decides to end this silly squabble, revving up its engine further and further, until it eventually unleashes an absolutely massive ear-piercing scream that could shatter the boundaries of all known worlds, crushing everything in its way, while heavily syncopated gunfire clears the rest of the path for it.

12. You Will Be Mine

Clearly, they have angered the Supreme Entity, its fury pulsating violently through space. There is no escaping now. Its all-powerful voice repeating what it knows for a fact to be true, that You Will Be Mine, it gives off a strangely calming, almost serene vibe, but the closer it gets, the more deranged the now looping voice becomes. Then, when they think they have somehow escaped its grasp, Uno's spine-tingling, goosebump-inducing voice appears right inside their brain, before unleashing utter mayhem in the form of some hefty broken beat action, foghorn lasers and bombastic basses. The longer it goes on, however, the less our cowboys struggle against this forceful indoctrination, eventually fully giving in.

13. Criminal Romance

Now having taken the more pleasant form of a plantoid Lady Justice, Uno begins to infuse the prophecy of the Burr Oak into them, here sang by Julien and Niko themselves. How the Criminal Romance, this wicked immorality, has befallen this once great land and the only remedy is helping the Oak regain its power, in exchange of freedom for our heroes. The further into the story Uno goes, the more powerful the magic around it becomes, until a vortex of natural energy fully enraptures our heroes. With the screechy voice of Uno piercing through every now and then, walls of pure bass fully close them off from the outside world, one-two-punching anyone who dares come close, while the whirlwind wildly shakes our heroes into submission.

14. All I Dream

While clearly having violent tendencies, Uno is not just all about chaos and destruction, it's also capable of dreaming of a more beautiful future. One in which we all live in harmony. With techy yet softly rolling drums, dreamy yet otherworldly melodies and a warm blanket of bass underneath it all, Uno shows our heroes that this peaceful, serene future is All She Dreams about. Channelling their inner Forum, this is probably the most relaxed and all-around lovely Burr Oak tune you'll ever hear.

15. Relish The Moment (feat. Lifesize MC, Izela, & Lilø)

This spur of positivity continues on Relish The Moment, with Giles "Lifesize MC" Refoy reprising his role as eloquent wordsmith from Dark Age, newly-discovered talent Elisa "Izela" Salat's continuing to impress with her soulful vocals and enigmatic newcomer Juliette "Lilø" Herry completing the life-affirming quintet. That's right, instead of gunslinging heroes blasting away alien beings, this one is about trying to make sense of the chaos that is life. Said chaos is represented by probably the wildest syncopated drumwork yet and absolutely deranged, glitched-out basses, which become somehow even more ridiculous in the slowed-down second half. And since the lyrics really make you think, they even threw in a couple Think Break vocals in there! Incredibly unique, wonderful tune.

16. Save The Days

While we're exploring new kinds of Burr Oak experiences, let's hop on over to my absolute favourite of the album, Save The Days. Starting off relatively light-weight, with an ominous yet also strangely calming atmosphere and a simple yet gorgeous vocal sample, the tune put me in such a dreamy trance that what happened next threw me for the biggest curveball in quite some time. The atmosphere is cut wide open with a glitchy chime, followed by short scriggly sounds that scratch my brain in ways I have never experienced before, making way for the single most colossal wall of newschool synths I have ever been exposed to, with which Julien and Niko have built a truly glorious melody. I am seriously struggling to come up with words to describe just how ginormous this is and just how flashed I was, and still am.

Alright, let's dive right back into the heavier sides of these two, with Blind At Night. With a now way more threatening buildup atmosphere, full of larger-than-life basses and featuring another fine-tuned emotional vocal performance, you already know this gon' get heavy. Repeatedly decrying that it's too late because they have sustained major bleeding wounds, it is not looking good for heroes, wherever they may be at this point in the story. Shortly after, we are proven right, as unhumanly distorted basses take control of the ride, only relenting at the very end, when we slow down once more for one final repeat of the vocal.

18. Somewhere We Belong

Both we and Scruggs & Sonny have reached our respective destinations. In this grandiose finale, Julien and Niko are pulling out all the stops to depict the final act of this story, the final procedure to return the mighty Burr Oak to power. However, just as it is about to finish, the process fails with an ear-piercing error message! It's too late to go back now though, the Burr Oak starts booting up with all its might, with slowly-moving, deafeningly glitched-out basses whipped up to speed with heavily syncopated, snare-heavy drum loops. Once it has finished powering up, the air around it falls silent, but of course, this peace is short-lived, as the supernatural entity fires up once more, with even punchier, straight-forward and all-around raw drum action.

Conclusion

Even though it's quite the extensive body of work at 18 (!) tunes, thanks to a production so deliberately tight yet so magnificently massive at a level literally no one even comes close to at the moment, you are still left wanting even more at the end. Everything is a banger in its own right, even though each tune is still quite different from each other most of the time. As if that wasn't already enough, Julien and Niko went the extra mile and created a world so rich in details, so fun to get lost in and so creatively written that you just want to consume every last bit of related content available. Rarely do you ever see an album's story presented as uniquely as they did it here, with some story beats unfolding over 4-5 tracks, as if part of a multi-season TV show or a series of movies. I am honestly dying to see the full stories they have come up with, even just reading the short blurbs was already incredibly inspiring.

There are so many instant classics on this album that I honestly struggle to pick my favourites, but after long deliberation, I would say my personal stand-outs are Symbolic, because the sheer magnitude of the delayed bass never fails to catch me off-guard, Twain Wolves, since it is the absolute meanest, most bassface-causing tune I have ever heard, and Save These Days, for being able to somehow be both absurdly heavy and outstandingly beautiful.

Easily my favourite album of the year, nothing will be able to come close to it. Absolutely worth the hype, which is saying something.