Burial

A South London producer on Hyperdub whose albums Burial (2006) and Untrue (2007), made in Sound Forge, defined a dark post-dubstep sound; "Archangel" turns a pitched-up R&B vocal into a new melody.

Origin: South London, England
Years active: 2001-present
Genres: dubstep, UK garage, 2-step, ambient, future garage
Labels: Hyperdub, XL Recordings
Also known as: William Bevan

Hyperdub and anonymity

Burial is the project of William Emmanuel Bevan, a producer from South London, active from 2001. He composes in Sound Forge, avoiding trackers and sequencers. From about 2002 he sent home-made CD-Rs to Kode9, the founder of Hyperdub, which began as a webzine in 1999 and became a record label in 2004; Burial was its first signed artist. In early interviews he said only five people knew he made tunes. The Independent speculated about his identity in February 2008, and after Untrue was nominated for the Mercury Prize, tabloid speculation named others; on August 5, 2008 Bevan confirmed his identity with a photograph on MySpace. He has reportedly never played a live show, though that comes from a fan wiki.

His self-titled debut (May 15, 2006, Hyperdub) was named record of the year by The Wire; the Guardian's Dorian Lynskey gave it five stars and called it the most mesmerizing electronic album of the year, and AllMusic's Jason Birchmeier called it the first great dubstep album. He told an interviewer in 2006 that he did not find melodies catchy, he found drums catchy. The cover, by him, shows an aerial view of South London near Wandsworth Prison.

Untrue and after

Untrue (November 5, 2007, Hyperdub) was recorded in Sound Forge and reached number 58 on the UK albums chart, after a sales rise of 1,004 percent in the week following the 2008 Mercury ceremony, where it lost to Elbow's The Seldom Seen Kid. It scored 90 on Metacritic, Pitchfork's Philip Sherburne gave it 8.4, and the Guardian placed it 31st on its 2019 list of the 100 best albums of the 21st century. He told The Guardian in 2007 that he made the whole thing in the space of a week, a claim we have only through a relayed transcript. He first made darker, more technical material and scrapped it, then aimed to make it fast and at night, and with no session singer he edited a cappella samples into sentences. The cover is a pencil sketch of a closed-eyed coffee drinker he drew since childhood.

Later releases include the EPs Street Halo (2011), Kindred (2012), Rival Dealer (2013) and Young Death / Nightmarket (2016), collaborations with Four Tet, Thom Yorke, Massive Attack and The Bug, the compilation Tunes 2011-2019, Antidawn (January 2022), Streetlands (October 2022) and Dreamfear / Boy Sent From Above on XL (February 2024). He scored Andrea Arnold's Bird and Harmony Korine's Baby Invasion, and released Comafields and Imaginary Festival on Hyperdub on July 31, 2025. He co-compiled Fabriclive 100 with Kode9 in 2018.

Records

Untrue 2007 · Hyperdub
The second album, with vocal fragments, rain and game sounds, and a Mercury Prize nomination.

Songs

Archangel Untrue · 2007
Track two on Untrue, built from pitched vocal fragments of Ray J's "One Wish" and a string sample from a video game.

Broadcast, Tim Hecker

Where to go next

Reference

Interviews

Dan Hancox: Burial's last interview The 2007 transcript.

Sources

Burial (musician), Wikipedia
Burial (Burial album), Wikipedia
Hyperdub, Wikipedia
Burial's last interview, Dan Hancox (2007)