Burial - Beyond the Clouds

London, 2005. The rave era is already a distant memory. What's left of drum'n'bass is just a pile of elusive fragments, having scattered completely by the late Nineties and lodged like shrapnel in the most disparate corners of the scene. Nobody's flying around 160 bpm anymore, and the basses are getting heavier. What's gaining ground among young London producers is an obsessive attention to every single pulse. But above all, it's a rekindled love for dub and jungle that suggests intriguing new hybrids, new possible mutations. The Scottish Steve Goodman, aka Kode9, working out of his Hyperdub studios, is among the first to shake up what at first glance seems like just a "general feeling" circulating in the underground circuits of a London left sad and wounded by various terrorist attacks. The man instinctively follows the call of the darkest uk-garage — above all El-B and Noel "Roxy" Smith teaming up on the EP "Breakbeat Science" — and the vocal dub of his friend MC Stephen Samuel Gordon, better known as Spaceape. The first singles immediately show new life. Something dark and magnetic surrounds their music, marked by wild rhythmic subdivisions and shadowy percussive advances. The seminal compilation "Five Years Of Hyperdub" would later gather, in 2009, all the available elements useful for mapping out a first milestone of that thing called Dubstep.

Meanwhile, in the same corners of London, two other producers, Sam Shackleton and Laurie "Appleblim" Osborne, give life to an experience that runs parallel to Steve and co.'s. It's a niche project, decidedly unusual and illuminating within the English post-garage universe. It's called "Skull Disco", and it's the label from which the rhythmic verve of the earliest Dubstep draws its energy. Their formula calls for a ferocious, anachronistic drumming, signalling right away the presence of a new, energetic tribalism in the deep south of the English capital. Sam and Laurie are living the other half of the story. And "Soundboy Punishments" will be the compilation album that, in 2007, fuses together the wonderful shards of this brief but intense experience. Still, it's too early to throw all these elements into the same pot. Dubstep is still a youngster who likes to blend in with the crowd, and plenty of people still wrongly read it as some kind of lifeless rehash of post-Tricky trip-hop mixed with some latter-day dub.

Amid all this blossoming and downplaying, William Bevan is just a shy English kid who doesn't like going out much at night, who loves shutting himself in his room drinking litres of Coke in front of an overheating monitor, who tries to compose music by daydreaming with his own ghosts, projecting them onto a thin canvas stirred at its centre by the breath of heavy basses and rattled at the edges by 2-step breaks only partly held in check.
William is a lone wolf the likes of which hadn't been seen in ages. He has no interest whatsoever in being known beyond his music. His tracks are the fragments of his own unease. And that's enough. William is a decent lad, introverted but ultimately at peace with himself. He loves the sound of rain and the urban desolation that comes with it. He hates the live atmosphere, its hostile rituals and the compromises made with an audience. The room where he sleeps is the only space where he enjoys airing his sonic affairs. His den is a world apart, where sampled, disjointed voices, flashes of light and drops of rain alternate to sketch a bleak yet somehow celestial picture. From its very first moments, Will's music steers clear of scenes and crowds. Will is alone, and he wants to stay that way. His talent at the controls draws energy from a troubled inner vibration. The lad flatly refuses to mix with the world. He's simply a producer used to hiding in the shadows, a friend of Steve's and Kieran's, a simple man who loves staying silent, staring at his own shadow, while outside people wait for something to really change, pretending to be happy and carefree.

It's spring 2005 when this mysterious English dj-producer decides to reveal his music to the world, exporting it from his den to the rest of the planet thanks to his trusted ally Goodman. Thus the Burial project is born. The first two EPs under this name, South London Boroughs and Distant Lights, effectively lay out the content of the self-titled debut that would follow. The first contains four tracks offering a sketch of his temperament. Low lights and a rhythmic unease straight out of a post-apocalyptic scenario mark young Will's first four cries. On the second, an excellent Kode9 remix turns up, along with three other tracks later included on the debut album.

Twelve months of anxious waiting follow before the enigmatic moniker crosses paths with us again on Hyperdub's mailing list. In the early months of 2006, Burial, Bevan's debut LP, is finally announced. It's a record in which everything comes alive without fully exploiting synthesizer polyphony, and whose bleak mood seems, without much need for explanation, to harken back to the early Bristol upheavals.
It's an album that gives off a chilling, cavernous sound, meant to bury a dormant postmodern hope. There's little light in its tracks, while the sky looms dark and threatening. An imploded restlessness reigns in its structures, befitting a nerdy producer detached from the rest of the world. So the electric metronome of "Wounder" is paired with a raw, nerve-jangling bass, while the gorgeous "Prayer" offers the natural definition of Dubstep, with no need to open a dictionary or pay lip service to some half-baked concept printed in an American magazine.
Will's first work gets immediate recognition from most critics, and it also makes room for several harrowing melancholic passages, such as the acid-tinged laments, pure Eno by way of Aphex, picked up in "Forgive" and "Night Bus". The massive "Southern Comfort" then pulls us back into old raves played through battered sound systems. Its blazing dub palpitations embody the sickest expression of the early work of a sculptor whose real identity wouldn't be revealed until late 2007.
In this first long-player, the obesity of the basses is masterfully offset by a slow electronic simmer. A partial escape from this dark condition can only be glimpsed in the proto-soul ramblings of "Gutted". The rest is a suffocating stay among the ruins of the murkiest drum'n'bass, where everything suggests absence and abandonment, disenchantment and resignation. But what really strikes you about young Will is the deliberate detachment with which he delivers his relentless electronic modulations. His music gives off an industrial scent and rises like a toxic cloud over London's sky.

Several months go by, and the anonymous Bevan takes on the features of a mirage worth chasing, something genuinely worth waiting for and digging into. No appearances. Just a few words posted on his friend Kode9's website, a tasty third EP as a preview of an imminent second LP, Ghost Hardware, and that's it. And so the already excessive curiosity around him grows day by day, month by month, eventually exploding into wild theories of mystification involving some famous English dj-producer. For a while, the most absurd theories crop up. Some even believe that Burial is actually just a mask worn by a Tricky or a Norman Cook caught up in some new fit of delirium. But these are just baseless rumours.
A few months go by and William Bevan reappears on the crowded radar of the UK underground, like a small flickering light. Towards the end of 2006, still not fully identified coordinates once again point to the welcome presence of Hyperdub's mysterious mole. "Archangel" is the bombshell single that opens the door to a new Dubstep cataclysm. Vocal samples increase and appear at times more "regular", in some ways outlining the "pop" mutation/contamination now underway. Basses heavy as lead, used as a counterweight to an ethereal burst of shadowy detonations, are the strong point of a strikingly alien rhythmic cluster.
So the weaning of a scene, (re)christened Dubstep, carries on its wild cycle with the London producer's second pragmatic move: Untrue. Kode9, Hyperdub's deus ex machina, sits behind the mixing desk, produces, and gives thanks. On this second LP, Burial tries to bring into focus all the multifaceted experiences that had fed the phenomenon over the course of a year. Alongside Benga, Vex'd, Skream!, Digital Mystikz and Scuba, our man also reinvents himself in some way without overturning what he had firmly conveyed in his first work, thus seeking new horizons of peace for the whole "breaks" movement. With that deafening substrate of pachyderm-like beats partly removed, on Untrue Burial strengthens his melodic streak, bringing into a cyberpunk setting soul choirs, phone-call samples (!), intangible instrumental touches of orientalism, sugary pseudo-lounge digressions paradoxically close to the deepest house, also drawing from Nineties 2-step/uk-garage. The dark annihilation gives way to a bleak picture in which a small light to chase keeps popping up.
Once again it's a subdued voice that introduces our hero's deeds, followed by the irresistible rise of "Archangel", the primary embodiment of Will's future "pop" branches. The production stretches beyond the bounds of rhythm, treating the vocal as an effect to be manipulated with every line. Hatred and new love, behind a shield of dub pulses, sacred keyboards, archaic settings. We spoke earlier of the rhythms Burial manages to put together — this is perhaps the step that still sets him stylistically apart from so many others. The lad says he really likes crooked beats, that he has fun playing around with them, and in this game he ends up overlapping and merging distant ideas. He pushes his vision even further vertically, redefining it into a thousand layers that are by no means compressed but left free to touch and drift apart, creating fascinating, hazy sonic environments. There are many certainties with this record, above all the fact that Kode9's protégé has certainly not stopped at doing his "homework" — quite the opposite. Untrue projects the image of a man who seems to have found his own path through dub, aiming straight to shake up many people's convictions once again. Will finally manages to open up; the darkness of the debut has thinned out, both regarding the man and what he wants to tell us. But Untrue is a record that soon goes well beyond William's own intentions, becoming in the following years the manifesto of a new path, the ultimate reference point for Dubstep aiming at "pop", even brushing against certain r'n'b.

2008 is the first sabbatical year, and the now well-known William Bevan is on everyone's lips, the good and the bad alike. Even an attentive Thom Yorke notices, in the mood for the console, spinning Bevan's tracks nonstop in a mind-blowing dj-set put together as a surprise by the Wellingborough musician at the famous "Low End Theory" club in Los Angeles. In short, everyone's talking about Burial and everyone's looking for Will. Even Tiziano Ferro (!) mentions him in an interview, calling him one of the most exciting manipulators of the moment. But the lad keeps refusing to show himself, moving in great secrecy through Hyperdub's trusted circuits, until the fine day he digs up his friend Kieran Hebden, with whom he'd spent happy years at Elliott School in London.
An immediate connection and a fantastic collaboration are born right away: Moth/Wolf Cub. Two tracks setting the world on fire and suggesting new parallel worlds to follow endlessly, as if the blinding beam of light of "Untrue" were already a distant memory. Burial & Four Tet: mum and dad, black and white, yin and yang, good and even better. When news of the collaboration broke just days before the record's release, it seemed like a joke to everyone, hard to believe and even harder to imagine what two of the best producers of the 2000s could come up with together. One young but already a veteran, the other a man of the people who, in the space of two albums, had won over hearts and ears. As we said, two tracks, one side each of the vinyl they're pressed on, covering 18 minutes of grooves.

Moth/Wolf Cub is a homemade EP, like all the good things in life. "Moth" just lands, full stop. It knocks you out right away and quietly keeps on pounding. It's Burial's production grit. There's that coarse, filthy quality that marks his productions, the use of vocal samples fried and breaded in a ton of reverb, delay and echo. Underneath, Four Tet gets the band pedalling, bringing up a straight kick that does exactly what every techno, house, bedroom and superstar DJ, every hack and every phenomenon, was waiting for: the Burial sound, brought up to speed. He shakes off the obligatory break and builds up a massive, deep and terribly urban sound that makes you happy, soothed by its melodically techy synth, with the dirtiest grey of the metropolis wrapped around it. "Wolf Cub" is pure Four Tet material — anyone who doesn't recognise that little thing right at the start (tabla? Sitar? Something that doesn't even exist?) as Kieran Hebden's trademark, please leave the room. It grows the way creations stamped Orbital, Boards Of Canada, B12 used to grow, the way mother Warp taught us throughout the Nineties. First one thing, then another, with patience and pinpoint care. First the atmosphere, then the cut'n'paste melody, then the fat basses that feel like gusts of wind with the gain cranked too high. The stillness after the intro works as the perfect prelude to Burial's futuredub structure, which enters the flow like a thrown stone and kicks the melodic little game back into motion, a childlike thing as in "Everything Ecstatic", with that ability to lean on rhythms not his own that Kieran honed through his collaborations with Steve Reid.

Around the same time, an untitled track co-written with Will appears for a few days on Flying Lotus's Myspace profile. It's a rough statement of intent by the two of them, with several disjointed breaks in pure FlyLo style, set in some imagined videogame with dark scenery. The anonymous track will remain just a quick taste of a possible new collaboration still gathering dust in the attic to this day. 2010 is Will's second sabbatical year. But by now his music has already seeped practically everywhere. More or less everyone notices. And you can even catch his fingerprints on the radio. "Night Air" is the first single from Jamie Woon's second album, and Will is magically there. A hit to which the shy English producer lends his vital touch, after having been deeply struck by Woon's warm, captivating voice, to the point of also mixing one of his old tracks, "Wayfaring Stranger".

2011 arrives, and with it two more excellent collaborations. Thom Yorke fulfils his dream and, as a trio with Will and Kieran, releases the EP Ego/Mirror for Text. "Ego" is a wildly sensual, vividly coloured flight over Hebden-esque backdrops, interspersed with tiny Dubstep flutters. By contrast, "Mirror" offers a glimpse of pure 2-step catharsis, with the usual breaks from the first Burial album serving as backdrop to Yorke's melancholic, wistful vocals. A few days later, Will steps back into the open with his own fourth EP, Street Halo, made up of three tracks, or rather three shards launched from Hyperdub's headquarters to empty the overflowing buckets of drool gathering under the jaws of an increasingly excited audience. Indeed, what else could be hiding behind yet another quick appearance from the illustrious figurehead? A taste of a third meteorite? An impatient preview of what will shape the creature still in the young talent's womb? None of that. The rumours going around keep suggesting that there's still a long way to go before the event of the new decade, and that the present triptych makes no claims beyond showing us the sonic likeness of a Burial in a state of grace. Will drains the tangle, with its ph level near zero, on the title track that opens the EP, laid out over a straight kick, picking up right where "Raver" had dropped the curtain on Untrue, thus revealing new ingredients for the future and his more "dance-oriented" side. Immaculate groove alternating with a vocal ecstasy only partly suppressed by the cavernous depth of the basses and textures. And the climax keeps building. As a counterpoint, "NYC" pulls our spirits back into the shadows: barely-sketched broken-beat, a few pirouettes to warm up the room, and a gloom lying beneath a vocoder voice pleading in soul fashion. The liquid bounce of "Stolen Dog" then softens the tone, highlighting a more organic evolution of the beat.

The event remains a big one, even though Street Halo is just an EP, while the silent Will keeps winning over fans left and right. This time it's the standard-bearers of trip-hop, and in many ways the putative fathers of Dubstep, who get in touch: the divine Massive Attack. Thus another exciting collaboration is born, once again, as it happens, in EP form, and in a strictly limited edition. Two tracks spread over a twelve-inch made specifically for just a thousand lucky fans stir up yet another storm online (one that, incidentally, had been announced in advance). The evergreen, unshakeable Robert and Grant are drawn to the red-hot Will, a rightful partial heir to the massive sound of the two old Bristol manipulators. A marriage that, in a way, doesn't come as much of a surprise to industry insiders or part of the audience, given the exhausting, repeated commercial crossovers happening among all kinds of producers these days. Still, never as much as in this case is the blend one of those that really sizzles, especially given the plausible elective affinity between the three sacred beasts in question.
One track made together and a remix. That's the "meagre" haul to be extracted from the meeting/clash that is Massive Attack vs. Burial: backing tracks extracted, shaped and warped by the Hyperdub lad, and vocals handled by the cat and the fox. The first half of the record is taken up by "Four Walls", in which the three of them let loose (so to speak) around the three-minute mark, giving rise to a kind of funeral march wonderfully propped up by a heavenly, and at the same time chilling, vocal. Twelve minutes of electronic exoticism and heaps of melancholy. Meanwhile, on the other half, a lunar reworking of "Paradise Circus" unexpectedly appears, originally sung by muse Sandoval on the solid "Heligoland".
The three of them somehow manage to recast the whole affair, trying to make it more intimately ecstatic, inserting the usual Bevan-esque sonic carpet with its decadent setting, complete with an angelic coda and a slowed-down vocal at its centre, propped up by permanently deep basses and an electric tick-tock set bubbling repeatedly, like magma. Unfortunately, the moonless result that comes of it doesn't deliver much emotional payoff. And all things considered, it seems only the brand-new joint composition between the trip-hop pioneers and the central pivot of that strange thing called Dubstep really works.

Towards the end of 2011, yet another EP is announced from Hyperdub's headquarters. The second EP after Untrue, after the Noughties masterpiece, after the manifesto of new Dubstep. So Kindred sizzles from the very first minute. It burns heat and gives off flashes of light, sometimes faint, sometimes suddenly blinding. The four parts that make up the opening title track immediately offer distant angelic moans layered over a dry 2-step deconstruction. William throbs and scatters. Desolation remains. But a dark hope emerges. And whereas on Street Halo the lad still preferred hiding in the shadows, on Kindred it's time to stick his head out of the shell and know how to bite. After the well-deserved praise, Will starts toying with the idea of giving his own sound a sharp jolt, before it's too late and before anyone starts growing tired of his relentless rhythmic isolationism. "Loner" is therefore built on the kick drum. Will throws his mask onto the dancefloor, catching everyone and everything off guard.
The introverted producer suddenly lets himself be carried away by the beat of his own heart, no longer having to reckon with personal ghosts to feed. His is an android escape in the vein of the dancefloor. By the fifth minute, the engines flare up before arrival. The final thrust. The destination is reached. Time to go home. A slow simmer unsettles the usual vocal samples. The night is over. But the true climax is still to come. The third chapter is the closing one, but above all, the beginning (?) of a new path.
All things considered, Burial is well aware that he must always bear the "weight" of showing contemporaries and future generations new material and new Dubstep lifeblood. But William Bevan is also a lad with broad shoulders and a heart as big as a house. So "Ashtray Wasp" embodies everything that makes Untrue such a hugely important record for the evolution of dubstep music within contemporary pop. The first four minutes show Archangel Will's wings spread wide, a change of course in the void before gaining altitude at the fifth minute and continuing to pour down from above a burst of soul-step orgasms, trimmed in the final bars by a more concise rhythm, masterfully coloured in the tail end following the teachings of his friend Kieran.

Just six months later comes Truant, the sixth EP of his career, containing just two tracks, the opening title-track and "Rough Sleeper". At first glance, the lad's ability to fuse his own experiences into a single blend remains intact. It's no coincidence that, right from the opening, between one soft break and the next, Hebden-esque fascinations and exotic tinkling creep in, while the rhythm section finds no peace, trying to lift the listener's soul off the ground and project it into a fragmented sprint of utterly unpredictable beats, shifting according to the moment and the dark atmosphere to be recreated.

The following "Rough Sleeper" treads the same paths but with a greater underlying sense of hope. There's a new light. And at times the rain Bevan so loves to take refuge in seems like just a distant memory, while a kind of pulsing ascent, calmed here and there by sudden swerves and pauses that advance like the hiss of a turntable, drags hearts once more between oblivion and paradise. The overall approach is essentially the same, that is, finely crafted two-step zigzagging through unsettling metallic inserts, a vaguely industrial atmosphere, and a perpetual melancholy hinting at alienation and some unspecified torment.

The circle has yet to magically close. Kindred and Truant could comfortably be considered a single record. Both 12"s embody yet another mutation of an urban chameleon, yet another confirmation of talent, yet another flash of genius from a visionary. The dark guardian and the shy jester finally live under the same roof.

2013 instead marks a substantial first turning point. The lad presents himself to the public once again with an EP, his seventh, following the arcane path laid out successfully from the very start. With Rival Dealer, the introverted manipulator once again satisfies his essentialist approach to output, giving us only (so to speak) three tracks. Those who were anxiously awaiting the third full-length will therefore have to shelve their hopes once again. Hyperdub's flagship man likes to release things rarely, well, and at the "right" moment. In his world there's no forcing things. And in a way, that only reinforces the weight of his persona.

The EP contains three wildly different episodes that suggest new sensations, new possible branches. Almost unexpected, less bleak moods peek through. Something angelic and metaphysical must have stirred the soul of the ever-shy Bevan. The hints of a newfound serenity are plain to see, in some way shaped by the need to alternate beats and vocal samples with sudden moments of reflection in a dream-ambient vein. Burial once again extracts voices and effects from the most disparate musical universes. In the title track alone, several can be counted. The most dynamic track of the trio blends the solemn Dubstep explosiveness inaugurated in "Archangel" with moments of genuine stillness, as becomes clear in the second half of the track through the brief return of Säju, through which the intent to build a pseudo-sacred climax à la Enya is unmistakable.

In the following "Hiders", the man declares to everyone that he has acquired a new melodic sensibility, dragging himself into a kind of celestial embrace that suddenly takes flight through a surprisingly eighties rhythm section. The closing "Come Down To Us", on the other hand, opens with a merciless "Excuse me, i'm lost", before an orientalising, Muslimgauze-like drift underscores its restless spirit.

Rival Dealer hands us a Burial far more inclined to broadcast his own turmoil, whose nihilism seems to have found an enchanting meeting point with a rediscovered hope. However, this new blend of intentions doesn't fully bear fruit, showing some rather soporific patches here and there. A richer helping would also be needed to properly analyse any possible new direction. All that's left, then, is to keep waiting for the third LP, so as to better gauge the solidity of this mutation.

Two years go by, and Bevan drops a monster single for Keysound titled Temple Sleeper. It's a strange meteorite, through which all his love for the most contaminated strain of garage shines through. The rhythm is frantic, while a horror-movie keyboard spreads anxiety and disorientation, amid sudden stop&go moments, absurd minimal accelerations, and anything else you could throw in. It practically feels like being right in the middle of a Nineties hardcore rave.

In 2016 Will decides to rely once again on a maxi single. There's little to be done about it: for Dubstep's most mysterious and celebrated manipulator, the album is something of a taboo. Fresh off his collaboration with friend Zomby on the excellent two-hander "Sweetz" featured on "Ultra", Bevan gets back in the game his own way, through two tracks unveiled once again in Batman mode: starting with an initial secret listening leaked via Discogs, moving through an initial official denial, and finally the long-awaited confirmation from Hyperdub itself.

The two tracks on this 12" highlight Burial's boundless veneration for films of the calibre of "Alien" (dialogue sampled here and there), post-rave atmospheres, dreary nights out and inner isolation; a nihilism that translates into solutions aimed at putting both body and soul at rest. The young Burial, capable of stunning listeners with his fateful wobble basses, sudden 2-step swerves and garage blasts powerful enough to bring the walls down, is by now a decidedly distant memory.

Words of love and hope crop up, like "I will always be there for you", delivered in his usual manner, amid unexpected samples of Keni Burke and Japanese composer Koji Kondo, sudden halts and a cadenced beat reminiscent of his friends Massive Attack ("Young Death"). In the second half of the record, meanwhile, Will speeds up (so to speak), plays with the melody of the magnificent "Return to the Origin" by Mike Oldfield, and samples the soundtrack of the 1988 video game "Last Ninja 2: Back With a Vengeance", composed by Matt Grey; all amid the usual alienated stop&go moments, the ever-timeless dark and shadowy atmospheres, and an unabashed love for homemade, pulsing eighties electronics.

Unlike a monster single such as Temple Sleeper, here Burial puts all his introverted, elusive nerd charm on full display. It's literally impossible to keep up with him and figure out whether the fateful third LP will ever arrive. As a result, all we can do is trust his instincts, hoping to find him again as soon as possible, and with plenty more tricks up his sleeve.
A few months pass and a new EP arrives too, titled Young Death/Nightmarket. The London producer once again puts on full display his love for films of the calibre of "Alien" (dialogue sampled here and there), and his unbreakable bond with decadent post-rave atmospheres; a nihilism that often translates into solutions aimed at putting both body and soul at rest. The young Will, capable of stunning listeners with his fateful wobble basses, sudden 2-step swerves and blasts powerful enough to bring the walls down, is by now a decidedly distant memory.
The relentlessly falling rain once again fuels the unease, and words of love and hope crop up, like "I will always be there for you", delivered in his usual manner, set as a counterweight to the dark, melancholic mood, amid unexpected samples of Keni Burke, Japanese composer Koji Kondo, and cadenced beats reminiscent of his friends Massive Attack ("Young Death").

2017 arrives, and Burial releases a remix of the unforgettable "Inner City Life" by the great Clifford Joseph Price, aka Goldie. For Record Store Day 2017, Metalheadz, the historic drum'n'bass label, decides to reissue Goldie's epochal track in a special edition, including William Bevan's own reworking inside it. It's just a taste of what would turn out to be, in its own way, an intense year for good old Will.
And so, after revisiting pioneer Goldie on the occasion of Record Store Day, Hyperdub's flagship artist confirms his renewed activity and presents himself once more his own way, suddenly dropping this two-track EP, titled Subtemple. As usual, in this new release too the London producer bets everything on substance, paying no mind whatsoever to his own "image", nor to attention-grabbing covers or other gimmicks with purely promotional aims. His intent is simply to put his music out there. All things considered, Bevan continues to stay in the shadows, "not giving a damn" about the usual conventions. In any case, in these two tracks the most desolate Burial "comes out". The mysterious producer from Kode9's stable shows no mercy, not even to himself. Both the opening title track and the following "Beachfires" stoke an intense unease, and bring to light a climax as bleak as it is deeply melancholic. Intermittent voices follow one after another, horror-movie scraps, urban noises, conversations picked up from some remote corner of his London, and sounds at times impossible to decipher. Within this depressive framework, whose sonic direction doesn't always reach its destination, a ticking clock and a handful of piano notes pop up here and there, functioning as a metronome and as "melody" for the whole. A whole that remains pitch black regardless, through which, once again, shines an immense detachment from the world, an isolation that is often impossible to escape. In short: take it or leave it.

But 2017 will be remembered above all as one of the most intense years for William Bevan. After having shaken more or less everyone with the deeply desolate two-track EP Subtemple, the lad finally decides to set aside his all-consuming melancholy for a moment, giving us something wildly different.
Rodent thus signals a total departure from the dark, alienated mood of the two tracks dropped in the first half of the year, and puts on full display an approach entirely devoted to a certain strain of deep house. At times it feels like listening to the deepest Larry Heard (!) of the Nineties. Burial fills the atmosphere with his classic, recurring vocal snippets with a vaguely soulful feel, and even an intermittent sax pops up. A slap in the face for all those who, after the glories of the previous EP, had already declared the end of our man's unpredictability and his love for the straight four-to-the-floor kick. But that's not all. Even more disorienting is the subsequent reworking of the same track by none other than Kode9, who literally overturns the mix with a thoroughly personal rumpling built on jangly rhythms, sudden cybernetic synth swerves, organic textures, and epochal, dizzying shifts of direction in the final two minutes that quite literally launch the entire skeleton originally crafted by Burial into orbit. A masterpiece of a remix in footwork style that calling the best of the year would be an understatement. An EP that surprises, and that finally regenerates.

Burial returns in the sweltering heat of 2017, announcing like a normal producer (yes, really!) the arrival of his new EP of two tracks, titled "Pre Dawn" and "Indoors". This time, the real news isn't our man's sudden appearance, but rather his momentary move to Alexander Green's Nonplus, aka Boddika. A younger label, different in appeal and style from the by-now historic Hyperdub.

Nevertheless, Burial decides to remain partly true to himself while also lining up two nuclear bombs that in some ways indulge his madness, his detachment from everything and everyone; while in other ways they project him onto new tracks, new coordinates that, at the end of the tunnel, lead us into a kind of cybernetic jungle where some frighteningly hardcore game lies in wait, belly-up.
It's therefore a thoroughly vicious, savage, cinematic, disturbing, brash Burial that comes through in the opening title track. The Burial you really don't expect. Sure, the desolate pauses halfway through the track and the dark scraps in the tail end have long been an integral part of his trademark, but the acidic, venomous restart that follows thrills and disorients beyond measure. In the other half of the record, we instead find a sonic enrichment in the very first moments that's decidedly more cinematic. But it's only a fleeting illusion. A few moments later and a frayed, pulsing kick appears with a menacing voice and an absolutely magnificent house-style restart.

The whole affair intensifies as time goes on, and the killer vibe doesn't let up until the usual melancholic stop&go, all breaks and kinetic flickers, takes over. In short, with Pre Dawn/Indoors we're faced with a kind of about-face, with an industrial flare from which it's literally impossible to escape. Something warped and unusual. Certainly, there's no way to know whether all this might serve as a warning of further swerves to come. Given the various turns of the year, and the changes of direction put into practice, with Burial you really should expect anything at all. In the meantime, let's lick our chops and enjoy these two gems at full volume. The future can wait.

 
On December 6, 2019, to mark Hyperdub's fifteenth anniversary, the compilation Tunes 2011-2019 is released. It's the definitive manifesto of a growth that shifted according to the needs and moods of the moment, ultimately dominated by the house-Dubstep hybrid "Claustro", which together with the eight minutes of "State Forest" — capable of conjuring a landscape as battered as it is wonderfully dark — forms Bevan's last truly excellent two-track Ep. The selection is undoubtedly a treat, even if it leaves out the unlikely deep-house echoes of "Rodent" and that Keysound-stamped garage miracle that was "Temple Sleeper". Debatable omissions depending on taste, but overall it's a collection that already carries with it the nostalgia of a glorious saga. 

Two years later comes yet another sudden two-track Ep: Chemz/Dolphinz. In short, Hyperdub's talent par excellence still won't play by the rules and keeps doling out his productions sparingly. And he does so by splitting the difference between absolute highs and moments of real uncertainty. "Chemz" is in fact a track rich in garage-leaning twists, neo-soul inserts and samples of every kind assembled with flair, unlike the more recent releases, devoted mostly to an underlying drama and the usual Dubstep-flavoured nihilism that has been the London musician's tried-and-tested trademark since the beginning.

It would be enough to point out the total change of pace around the sixth minute, and the even more frantic one around the twelfth. Burial is unleashed. He's gone hardcore (!). And between one acceleration and the next, he fishes out anything and everything. Among others, we find snippets of Michael Jackson, Ne-Yo, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Freeez, Lori Ruso, Linda Ross, Eden Transmission. Three little chapters, then, forming a single grand first act that could represent (one hopes so much) the future.
The other half of the record, occupied by "Dolphinz", runs about three minutes shorter. With it, the murky climax returns. Satisfying darkness.  In the very first moments analogue sounds even pop up reminiscent of Add N to (X) (to be clear), staged before a pristine synth anticipates the usual isolated steps, mixed for the occasion with an indecipherable play of light and shadow, distorted sirens, laboured breathing and all sorts of noises. Without beating around the bush: the exact opposite of what happens before it.
All things considered, Bevan keeps surprising us, for better and for worse. No offence intended, but the time may have come for the great comeback. The sudden flashes are starting to wear thin and dazzle a bit too much, often in a rather confused way, too.

Setting aside the frankly avoidable "Ep" label — chosen perhaps out of "affection", or sheer continuity with the past (who can say!) — the long-awaited Antidawn EP comfortably clears the 40-minute mark and consists of five movements that in some ways have little to do with the rhythmic inclinations shown here and there over the past decade. Because listening to the eleven minutes of "Strange Neighbourhood" gives the sensation of standing before a blurred hologram of Vanessa Rossetto (!). In other words: scattered noises, random or rather cheap-sounding swearing ("Make me feel like I'm in love"), with the usual slightly vocoder filter, quite a bit of Alvin and the Chipmunks on methadone. In short, patchwork, seemingly random deconstructions, or rather night according to William Bevan but without his music. It's essentially an insignificant suite, with a syrupy sophistication, whose essence is genuinely hard to grasp.

We move on then to the title track and the much-touted darkness of night, Burial's age-old fascination, in which perdition reigns supreme once again: "I'm in a bad place / With nowhere to go". There's no beat, no music, no melody. Even the sound of a malfunctioning lighter turns up, amid crickets, hazy drones, "pauses" (from what?) and words like "Tonight, i know it's coming". In plain terms: it feels like standing with a handful of people at the entrance of a church, waiting for the priest to arrive, while the sexton tries out, in the distance, something that should resemble an organ, fragments of sacred recordings whose liturgy is impossible to even follow. The reduction to the aforementioned "vapour", touted in the press release, is thus a pointless sticker.

"Shadow Paradise" continues down the same non-direction at the centre of the record. There is, however, a hint of accordion, which apparently is meant to guarantee a hollow sense of oblivion underpinning the whole thing: "Lonely, there's one / Alone in our reverie". And nothing changes in "New Love" and "Upstairs Flat" either. Sure, one could stretch for new hyperbole at the risk of sounding as soporific as the album itself, but the truth is we're simply back where we started, in Bevan's company at the doors of a church in the depths of winter, amid noises and scattered voices.

The question unfortunately arises spontaneously: why did Burial decide to put out a record like Antidawn EP? No one will ever know. And in the end, all that's left is to actually go into the church, with the noble intent of praying for a return at least worthy of his name.  

Logic, on the other hand, would dictate Streetlands as the natural continuation of Antidawn Ep. The undefined path of William Bevan towards a non-direction. The absence of a beat, the metronome-like sighs threaded through the score, the ceaseless outflow of noise, at times craving the abyss, elsewhere an impossible space. But although the approach remains largely in keeping with his more or less recent past, particularly on the opening "Hospital Chapel", Streetlands brings something else to the table.

Sacredness, first of all. Ecstasy of the spirit. As suggested, for that matter, by the Tibetan chants, almost choked halfway through the title track. Prayers from a parallel universe that finds its Einstein-Rosen bridge in Burial's soul. In his thoughts. And in his once again being damnably elusive on the production front.
It's an unpredictability of tone that settles in the third part of the piece, even touching heavenly heights, at least intermittently. Indeed, because Burial's aim is to ascend in fits and starts. To lean upward without ever switching on the nitrous oxide, or nos if you prefer, lulling himself in a perpetual suspension that becomes a yearning for release through the filtered voices of angels flying in the shadows.
We spoke of directionless music, then. Stable in every direction like ions. Electrostatics that turn pulsating in "Exokind", for a miracle of pure ambient progressive electronic music.

In 2024 William sets aside (?) his beloved Hyperdub, perhaps to start making his way into the ranks of XL.
Having shelved the ambient isolationism of the recent past, the absence of a kick drum and of any clear direction, on Dreamfear Burial stirs the waters again with a double A-side that brings to mind his other appearance on a label other than the usual one, Dusk and Blackdown's Keysound, back in the now-distant 2015: Temple Sleeper.
So, breaks as thirty-year-old jungle demands, with off-beat restarts veering into freestyle territory, twists here and there and sudden pauses as if one constantly needed to flip a vinyl record. In short, the title track is a frontal assault mixed with stones thrown from every possible direction. Thirteen minutes of blissful restlessness with samples that are sometimes indistinguishable, reaching their peak around the tenth minute through a killer arrangement that foreshadows an all-out rave-party finale. Take it or leave it, naturally.
However, while the anonymous Unknown Summer, born in the summer of 2023 together with his trusted Kode9, had by then suggested the worst, with a thoroughly predictable string of Dubstep surges blended with the usual ethereal little voices, this time round he sets the record straight, shaking off the torpor with a one-two that's lethal regardless, nostalgia and all, however mischievous it sometimes gets.
"Boy Sent From Above", on the other hand, opens amid scrap metal: there's a sampled spray can rattling about before figuratively painting a movement of roughly another thirteen minutes, amid eurodisco melodies, sudden stop&go moments, and a less feral but more focused beat.
Burial speeds up, slows down, plays with vaguely Oriental ideas borrowed from some record God himself forgot, other times picks out piano lines while firing up the engine and the red lights of his KITT, and finally stages his own party, telling us the pulse is still vivid and that the clock hands in his neck of the woods, in that strangest of worlds of his, intertwine following a mood that this time is vibrant, even if still anchored to an unchanging sense of perdition.
What's more, on the second track of the pair too, the tenth minute is the most surprising, with an adrenaline-fuelled bassline that drags everything back to some corner of memory, namely between the dancefloor worn down by break-dancing backsides and the distant gates of a disused warehouse.

Burial still won't hear of gifting us an Lp, though. And that's fine. Even if dreaming that it might (re)happen one day remains entirely legitimate.
So, two more tracks for the English producer. Two movements adding to an already vast catalogue of Eps. If the latest release with trusty Kode9 from last year, Phoneglow / Eyes Go Blank, had shown clear signs of fatigue, Burial's performance there was still the stronger one compared to Goodman's more watered-down showing — this time the order of the day is to hit the kick drum, in the club sense of the term, assuming that word is still in any way part of today's vocabulary.

With Comafields / Imaginary Festival Burial returns to his fairy-tale pulse, to the angelic crescendo that has so often defined his sound. Starting with "Comafields" itself, a kind of "Loner" dispatched into Bevan's rainy Eden. There's a sample of "Your Arms Around Me" by Jens Lekman, and above all there's a divine shift at the tenth minute that takes Burial right back to the immaculate days of "Kindred", with the usual little voice leading us into the unfinished rave, melancholic and once again elusive, amid indecipherable stop&go moments that also form the backbone of the following "Imaginary Festival", nomen omen for a party that refuses to start, only to then drift off somewhere in the sky by the fifth minute, giving rise to a metaphysical arrangement that spills into an ambient finale almost in the vein of Boards of Canada.
Between highs and lows, or more precisely between moments of glory and pauses, Comafields / Imaginary Festival gives us yet another Burial roaming free, firmly anchored to his own idea of trance music submerged somewhere between heaven and purgatory.

Contributions by Alberto Guidetti ("Untrue", "Moth/Wolf Cub")

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