East coast musician Adam Michael Kozak, aka Burial Grid, is returning to fill our ears and minds with new electronic music in the form of Shores of Quiddity. The album is a departure from Burial Grid’s previous LP, the dark, vocoder-heavy We’ve Come For Your Flesh which came out at the beginning of 2021. While that album took us straight into the heart of darkness that is grief, anxiety, and sadness in the form of industrial, dark-wave electronic tomes, Shores Of Quiddity has a more Gothic/Ambient feel.
Much like Kozak’s Negative Space from 2020, a soundtrack written to accompany the B.R. Yeager novel of the same name, Shores Of Quiddity exists on this quiet plane of existential dread. A soft-spoken record that had the intention of creating a calming place for the artist during a time of emotional upheaval in his life. A pocket of musical meditation when anxiety was constantly banging on the door. It worked at the time according to Kozak, but listening back to it now he says, “it just sounds like someone trying to springboard their way to enlightenment while being overtaken by an anxiety disorder.”
As a listener not engulfed in where these songs stem from, I can say there is a sense of quiet and calm, but still very much a darkness under the surface. Single “Biphasic” has a simmering quality; light and airy at the outset but there’s a feeling of unease just around the corner. The sound is early-to-mid-70s heavy synth, a touch of horror scores with Berlin School spirit. It puts me in mind of the great Rüdiger Lorenz and his innate ability to write something both calming and disconcerting. It’s like new age music for old psychic wounds. As the song builds those psychic wounds begin to hurt again, oh so subtly. Yet sometimes that hurt means healing is just around the corner.
Listen to “Biphasic” below, or wherever you get that digital music fix. More singles to arrive soon, along with videos. Shores Of Quiddity will arrive in full later this year.
Complex Distractions 
That short clip is something else. “It’s like new age music for old psychic wounds.” Indeed.
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Man, that artwork is exceptional.
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Isn’t it? Amazing.
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Yup. It’s the kinda artwork that would lead me to buy whatever. Even if it was a Justin Bieber album. It’s that good.
(I quite like what I’ve heard of Burial Ground, so I don’t need too much convincing).
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If Bieber rocked an album cover like this I may have to give him a second thought.
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