Burial | Artist

William Emmanuel Bevan aka Burial is a British electronic musician born 1979 in South London. Bevan, attended South London's Elliott School, at the same time as Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), with whom Bevan later collaborated. Initially remaining anonymous, despite his early acclaim, in August 2008 Bevan confirmed his identity, and posted a picture of himself on his Myspace page stating "I'm a lowkey person and I just want to make some tunes." Burial became the first artist signed to Kode9's electronic label Hyperdub in 2005. His music has been described as "blending fractured breakbeats with mysterious, pitch-shifted voices and loads of vinyl crackle, rainfall, and submerged video game sound effects, creating gloomy, dystopian soundscapes". His 2006 debut album Burial was named the album of the year by The Wire magazine, and his second album Untrue was released to further critical acclaim in 2007. Other outstanding releases include the EPs Street Halo (2011), Kindred (2012), Truant/Rough Sleeper (2012), and Rival Dealer (2013), and the compilation Tunes 2011-2019 (2019). Describing his approach to music, Burial explains "something happens when I hear the subs, the rolling drums and vocals together. To me it’s like a pure UK style of music, and I wanted to make tunes based on what UK underground hardcore tunes mean to me, and I want a dose of real life in there too, something people can relate to." Bevan composes his music in Sound Forge, a digital audio editor, and avoids the use of trackers and sequencers. As he describes the process in an interview, "Once I change something, I can never un-change it. I can only see the waves. So I know when I’m happy with my drums because they look like a nice fishbone. When they look just skeletal as fuck in front of me, and so I know they’ll sound good." He also said that he didn't use a sequencer, because if his drums were timed too perfectly, they would "lose something" and "sound rubbish." As a collaborator, Burial has worked with other leading electronic artists including Four Tet, Massive Attack, Thom Yorke and Zomby. Burial has been described by critics as "one of the most acclaimed, influential, and enigmatic electronic musicians of the early 21st century."

Artist Website: burial.bandcamp.com

Featured Albums: Burial

Related Artists: The Bug, Four Tet, Massive Attack, Zomby