Who is Burial? The most mysterious figure in electronic music
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(Credits: Far Out / Hyperdub)
Whether or not you’re aware of it, if you’ve been entrenched enough in music discourse in the internet age, you’ve probably stumbled across Burial before.
As one of the most revolutionary figures currently working in the world of electronic music, he’s offered up releases that have straddled the boundaries between garage, 2-step, techno and ambient over the course of the 21st century, and has credits next to his name that include working with the likes of Thom Yorke and Four Tet. Put simply, he’s a relatively big deal.
As fans, we wait with bated breath for a new release all the time, and yet predicting exactly when it’s going to happen is one of the hardest things you can do because of his elusive nature. Think of getting a new Burial release as a Christmas present; there’s a rush of excitement when you finally get to unwrap it, and the bounty becomes more and more scarce the older you get. The only difference is that you can’t guarantee it’ll come at the same time every year, let alone whether it’ll even happen once a year.
Even if you’re not familiar with his musical output, you’ll probably have been exposed to his existence in some other form. The album artwork for his 2008 album, Untrue, has been memed to death, with the miserable-looking character getting superimposed into ludicrous scenes that accentuate his assumed despair. There was once a time when a certain music publication used to repost an article about how it was the most important electronic record of the century so far, only for readers to tear them to shreds with gags about how the sky was still blue.
Hell, even my dad, who is unwavering in his distaste for most electronic music, has a passing understanding of who Burial is, so the bottom line is that we must surely all know who Burial is, right? It’s a strong assumption to make, and perhaps in terms of being aware of him being a significant electronic artist, we do know who he is. However, when it all comes down to our ability to recite any information about the man behind the music, most will hit a brick wall.
Who, exactly, is Burial?
What a question, eh? Who is Burial? We can say a couple of things with certainty. His name is William Emmanuel Bevan, from South London, and there are about three photos that are confirmed to be him on the entirety of the internet. That’s as far as you get without prying too hard. Good luck with the rest of your search, I guess.
Rather famously, Bevan doesn’t do interviews, which in itself isn’t unheard of from an artist who would rather remain elusive, but his ability to hide his footprints in a digital era is impressive. If you were to look up the name ‘William Bevan’ on your search engine of choice, he’s undoubtedly the most well-known person to bear this name, but beyond the first handful of results which talk about him and his music (in no great detail), it won’t take you long to start finding different namesakes, which ironically includes published court proceedings against a disgraced funeral director.
But why is he so elusive, and do we really not know anything else about him? If you were to ask the self-appointed sleuths of Reddit, they might be able to shed a little more light on certain aspects of his existence due to their frightening commitment to dig up the tiniest morsels of information as personal sustenance. You have to question why they must know these things, but considering you’re reading an article asking the question of who Burial is, I feel safe in saying we’ve both been there.
There are some jewels of information available, such as the fact that he has a brother, Joseph Bevan, who used to make hip-hop music in the mid-2000s under the name Compound Profound. We also know from this that he was part of a duo called The Untold alongside Bruk Lung, aka Dan Shaw, and that the mysterious “Rest in peace Danny” header on Burial’s old MySpace page is a tribute to this particular friend. If you’re feeling as though you’ve got any more sustenance from these nuggets, it might be worth making them last, because this is where the trail kind of ends.
The thing is, we don’t need to know any more about Bevan, and he’s under zero obligation to share more information about himself. There are plenty of artists within electronic music and beyond who hide behind smokescreens for different reasons, and while Aphex Twin does it because he likes winding up journalists, and modern-day provocateurs like Two Shell do it because they want to create mystery as a marketing ploy, Burial appears to do it because he has no interest in presenting himself in a different way.
The music he makes speaks for itself; it’s moody, introspective and intricate, and that’s all you really need to focus on. Our relationships with musicians and other artists have reached a point where we’ve become so attached that we feel a need to engage in parasocial relationships with them, but in a sense, the fact that Bevan doesn’t throw his fans any bait to nibble at means that he can avoid the spotlight entirely and have his music do the talking.
It’s refreshing to see that this is still possible in an age where information is seemingly available about anyone on the internet, but because Burial doesn’t give a fuck about spilling his life story, he’s probably living a comfortable life without having to worry too much about information leaking. Anyway, Christmas came early this year – here’s a couple of new Burial tracks.
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