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Burial (musician)

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Burial

Burial (born William Bevan) is a musician from London. He produces electronic music containing elements of dubstep, 2-step garage, and house music. His eponymous debut album was released in 2006 to critical acclaim. The Wire magazine named it their album of the year,[2] along with achieving fifth place in the Mixmag 2006 Album of the Year list,[3] and eighteenth in the best of the year list of The Observer Music Monthly supplement.[4] Burial's second album, Untrue, was also released to critical acclaim and was the second-highest rated album of 2007, according to the review-collating website, Metacritic.[5]

Identity and Mercury Prize nomination

Although both albums have been met with much widespread acclaim, Burial remained anonymous until August 2008, and said in an early interview that "only five people know I make tunes".[6] In February 2008, The Independent reported that Burial was an alumnus of south London's Elliott School named William Bevan[7] (another alumnus, Hot Chip's Joe Goddard, said in 2006 that Burial was in the year above him)[8]. The school's alumni also include Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet),[9] with whom Bevan has collaborated[10].

On 22 July 2008, The Guardian reported that Burial was a nominee for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize.[11] NME reported on 31 July 2008 that Burial was the favourite for the award.[12] After much Mercury Prize-related coverage in tabloid newspapers in the UK, including speculation that Burial was either Richard D. James or Norman Cook,[citation needed] Burial confirmed The Independent's information and posted a picture of himself on his MySpace page on 5 August 2008. A blog entry stated, "I'm a lowkey person and I just want to make some tunes, nothing else", as well as announcing a forthcoming four-track 12″, and thanking his fans for their support up to this point. On 9 September 2008, Elbow won the award in question.

Bevan claims to compose nearly all his music in SoundForge, a digital audio editor, and to eschew the use of trackers and sequencers. According to journalist Derek Walmsley,

Inspired by the darkside drum'n'bass of the Metalheadz label, Burial decided at the outset to avoid at all costs the rigid, mechanistic path that eventually brought drum 'n' bass to a standstill. To this end, his percussion patterns are intuitively arranged on the screen rather than rigidly quantized, creating minute hesitations and slippages in the rhythm. His snares and hi-hats are covered in fuzz and phaser, like cobwebs on forgotten instruments, and the mix is rough and ready rather than endlessly polished. Perhaps most importantly, his basslines sound like nothing else on Earth. Distorted and heavy, yet also warm and earthy, they resemble the balmy gust of air that precedes an underground train.[13]

Discography

Unreleased tracks

A number of unreleased tracks confirmed as Burial productions have featured in various mixes. So far, these have been mostly restricted to appearances on the Mary Anne Hobbs Experimental Show and Benji B's Deviation show on BBC Radio 1 (either directly or through promo mixes from Kode9) and mixes for Blackdown, although some remixes have been heard on other stations.

Unreleased Burial tracks include "Gaslight", "U Hurt Me (Version)", "Feral Witchchild", "Stairwell", "Speedball 2", "True Love VIP" and "Lambeth".[15][16][17][18]

A YouTube video surfaced in 2010 purporting to be a clip from a pirate radio show of a collaboration between Burial and dubstep legend El-B. The comments section implies that an album deal has been offered by the latter. The Nu-Levels album featuring Burial amongst others, will be shipped in 12" and CD formats as of the 20th of August according to the electronic music website Boomkat, and the 23rd of August from Amazon.

DJ-Kicks

On 21 April 2008, the news about a forthcoming DJ-Kicks release on !K7 Records (on 23 June 2008 in the UK[19] and 8 July 2008 in the US[20]) appeared in different blogs and fan sites in the Internet. The CD was not released on those dates, but there was official confirmation of the postponed release in early August on the DJ-Kicks website.[21] The only statement from Burial regarding the release was on MySpace, stating "fake djkicks tracklist got put up somewhere i got messages from people & producers thinking it was real. if i do djkicks it will be mostly old jungle tunes & new tunes. big up". The original release date was set for 11 November 2008, but was postponed to 6 January 2009. It was once again postponed to a later date.

Massive Attack

On February 10, 2010 Massive Attack's Daddy G[22] said to be planning a remix album with Burial regarding their latest release 'Heligoland' .

What the plan is... you know that Mad Professor record that we did? (1995's 'No Protection'). Essentially trying to get that together, where Burial essentially remixes quite a lot of the new tracks. Brings out a different version of quite a lot of the tracks that we've done

There is no timescale for the Burial remix project.

Other Mentions

Though not a collaboration, author China Miéville mentioned Burial in the dedications of his novel Kraken. In Kode9's book Sonic Warfare, Sound, Affect and The Ecology of Fear, 'Wil Bevan', amongst others, is thanked for the support given.

References

  1. ^ Fisher, Mark.Burial: Unedited Transcript Wire magazine. Retrieved on January 21, 2007.
  2. ^ "Rewind 2006". The Wire (275). October 2006. Retrieved 2008-07-25. {{cite journal}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. ^ "Best of 2006". Mixmag. December 2006. Retrieved 2008-07-25. {{cite journal}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  4. ^ The OMM's best albums of 2006
  5. ^ Best Albums of 2007
  6. ^ Hancox, Dan. "Only five people know I make tunes". The Guardian, October 26, 2007. Retrieved on January 21, 2008.
  7. ^ Brown, Jonathan (2008-02-11). "The real school of rock". The Independent. Retrieved 2008-02-27. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ Parkin, Chris (2006-10-02). "Hot Chip: interview". Time Out London. Retrieved 2008-02-27. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  9. ^ Famous Elliott people, from the Elliott school website.
  10. ^ Sisson, Patrick (2010-01-18). "Pitchfork interviews Four Tet". Pitchfork Media. Pitchfork Media. Retrieved 2010-02-17.
  11. ^ Mercury Prize Nominations
  12. ^ NME, 31 July 2008
  13. ^ Derek Walmsley, "Dubstep", The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music, ed. Rob Young, London: Verso, 2009, p. 92.
  14. ^ "Official Album Chart for the week ending 20 September 2008". ChartsPlus (369). Milton Keynes: IQ Ware Ltd: 5–8. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  15. ^ BBC–Radio 1–Mary Anne Hobbs–Tracklisting
  16. ^ Blackdown: Keysound Radio: 4Bristol mix
  17. ^ BBC–Radio 1–Mary Anne Hobbs–Tracklisting
  18. ^ Blackdown: Dub War and Rinse
  19. ^ Backspin Promotions Blog: Burial–DJ-Kicks
  20. ^ Backspin promotions: Burial–DJ-Kicks–!K7
  21. ^ Burial DJ-KiCKS (!K7CD227) Microsite coming soon!
  22. ^ ClashMusic–Massive Attack
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