Burial

By 2007, Dubstep was in the full swing of its own evolution and expansion. Plenty of water had already passed under the bridge by then, and rivers of ink had already been spilled on the whole movement, starting with the first, crucial pointers given a few years earlier by Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC Radio. The genre was immediately seen as a kind of postmodern, nihilistic fusion of the drum and bass of his majesty Goldie, the 2-step garage/broken beat of Lewis "EL-B" Beadle, with splashes of trip-hop in the vein of Tricky; a style that reached maturity and "independence" through a series of pivotal events, such as the radio project of Kode9, which in turn morphed into the founding of the invaluable Hyperdub, and the groundwork laid by the likes of Coki, Loefah and Youngsta, along with the legendary DMZ and FWD nights.

Yet to pinpoint the exact moment when it all began, we need to go back to the winter of 2000, to the precise instant when Tempa boss Neil Jolliffe wrote the press blurb to be handed around to industry insiders, aiming to give some credible and enticing promotional coordinates for the first Horsepower Productions single, "When You Hold Me": "It's like 2-step, but it's got dub in it. It's kind of like... Dubstep". That's where the story of dubstep has to begin, before turning our attention to a few obligatory stops along the way, such as the birth and legacy of the magnificent label Skull Disco, run by the duo Shackleton/Appleblim, and the early PlayStation-era productions of two very young mates, Skream and Benga, spun at parties by veteran DJ Hatcha.

Then there's him: William Bevan, aka Burial. The figurehead. The absolute champion. Or, more metaphorically, the man who changed everything, pulling it all in like a kind of supermassive black hole, only to spit it back out in a new dimension. His dimension. A unique space in which to lay out matter following laws that belong to no one but his own sensibility and his own boundless introversion. As the story goes, our man was pushed by his older brother to craft a series of rhythmic structures paying tribute to the London garage rave scene of the turn of the millennium. Then along came the right man, the talent scout buzzing with excitement: the aforementioned Steve Goodman, aka Kode9, at a moment in history when passion for dub and all its possible mutations was running white-hot. It was he who sensed the potential of that young lad, all home and raves, sci-fi films and video games. In 2004, Burial was a huge rough diamond and Kode9 the gem expert, the cultured craftsman whose job is to cut it and make it work, make it shine. Indeed, William's is a world apart, one where sampled, disjointed voices, shafts of light and raindrops alternate to sketch out a picture that is at once bleak and celestial.

It's the spring of 2005 when the young man decides to reveal his music to the world, exporting it from his den to the rest of the planet thanks to good old Steve. His first two EPs, "South London Boroughs" and "Distant Lights", anticipate the moods of the self-titled debut. 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 William's first four cries. On the second, an excellent Kode9 remix turns up alongside three other tracks later included on the debut album. The self-titled LP would soon after deliver relentless electronic modulations, an industrial "scent" never smelled before, rising like a dark, "toxic" cloud over London's skies.

"Untrue" arrives a year later, on November 5th to be precise. With it, the sound of the night becomes definitive, all-consuming. It's a work that embodies a whole range of sensations, like walking alone in the dark and cold after leaving the club, breath steaming out in an instant fog. A vast imaginary world takes shape, bristling with cold lights projected onto impersonal buildings, night buses cutting through deserted streets as they ferry the last "night warriors" (aptly enough!), through a London emptied out just hours before the frantic routine kicks back in. Solitude as a palliative, darkness as set design, music as catalyst: that's Burial's message, and the essence of his singular art of combination.

The lad has no band, no instruments, no studio - in short, he's missing almost everything. His whole world fits into the few square metres of his bedroom: a computer and nothing else. Soundforge, and off he goes. In that space, the ultimate distillation of his private world, his artistic soul brings out the best in itself: hood up, rain beating against the windows, steam rising from the coffee cup on the desk, all somewhere between one and five in the morning. Here William cuts, creates, destroys, reassembles, restructures, distorts, pours in his entire soul (and a bit of ours too), and hands it over to trusty Steve Goodman like a shy young Renaissance painter working under his Master. An unconfirmed but plausible-sounding rumour also has it that William uses samples of phone calls he's received for his songs; he records voices, roping in his mother, sister, aunt and the few people around him. Then he works them into his tracks, making them come across as extraordinarily distant, distorted, pained, ethereal.

In short, Burial seems like an extremely hard figure to decode, and yet in the very rare interviews he gave before the release of "Untrue", a calm, far from chaotic soul shines through. He's probably someone with an unusually strong sense of empathy. Indeed, "Archangel", which opens the album so beautifully, was written after the death of his dog; a loss that devastated him, and you can clearly sense it in the track's overall mood. Here William puts together an absolutely overwhelming, soul-inflected chorus, confirming his gift for melody. And so the lines "Holding you/ Couldn't be alone/ Loving you/ Couldn't be alone/ Kissing you/ Tell me how can you/ Tell me I belong/ Tell me I belong" become the refrain of the decade, his ultimate signature moment. As already noted, Burial pulls sounds from just about anywhere: films, video games, conversations, TV recordings, hailstorms. For him, any sound can become a source of inspiration. Add to this personal tendency a pronounced fondness for modern soul music.

Beyond drawing sounds from his own surroundings, both human and geographical, Bevan surgically extracts small vocal fragments, then radically alters them using time-stretching, tweaking the speed of the audio signal, from r&b, pop/dance and neo-soul artists such as Beyoncé, Ciara, Ray J and India.Arie; not to mention barely perceptible samples from the likes of D'Angelo, The Roots, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, right up to truly personal gems drawn from his unbridled passion for video games and for Metal Gear Solid 2, such as the theme composed by Harry Gregson-Williams and Norihiko Hibino, paid tribute to in "Archangel" itself. Bevan then fuses this melting pot of sounds and micro-melodies into a brilliant fabric that would come to be known as soulstep.

Burial also has a unique way of sampling female voices. In his tracks, it's as if angels and ghosts were singing in unison. And the masterpiece "Untrue" is steeped through and through in this melancholic, introverted, brooding mood. There's always that sense of loss lurking around the corner, weighing down, looming over everything; sadness as an ennobling feeling, useful for understanding that we must be present for the things that remain. Burial exalts this idea, amplifying it through a series of rhythmic combinations and sudden ambient breakdowns, at times deeply acidic. Even starting from a nihilistic stance, his is a feeling steeped in hope and redemption. To grasp it, one need only listen to "Endorphin", with its vocal inserts that sound as if sampled in some room in heaven, and its soothing, gentle, deeply reconciling electronic flow. A blend of intentions that reaches its peak in the muffled pulse of the supreme "Ghost Hardware", complete with killer basslines drifting in and out between moments of stillness, and a heavenly-toned, filtered voice that captivates, enchants and lays you flat.

But Burial is above all a keen observer of the reality around him. His gaze remains external, permeating the context often like a ghost hovering over the spaces of the city, watching them from a third-person perspective. "In McDonalds" alone, with its two minutes of sulphurous candour, fully embodies this inclination. The two-step rhythm, framed by the usual soul-inflected refrain of the magnificent title track, once again amplifies Burial's stylistic integrity and his utterly unique standing within the genre he belongs to. What's more, "Untrue" hides a surprise near the end in the shape of "Raver", in which William shows his more extroverted side, the perfect clubber, leaving everyone stunned and confirming his unpredictability, which would take on unstoppable proportions in the flurry of productions that followed.

Ultimately, "Untrue" is the compositional peak of a simply extraordinary artist. After its release, the more enterprising among us claimed that Burial was just a whim of Kieran Hebden or Norman Cook, giving rise to a wildly entertaining hoax. And for a very brief spell, Burial-mania ran rampant. Within the underground scene, Bevan became a deity, and on every obscure forum out there, he was the only topic of conversation. The final questions were always the same: who is this guy? Why won't he show his face?

It all ended when Bevan himself decided to share a photo of himself, followed by a brief but heartfelt statement thanking everyone, music journalists included. For his part, William has always carefully steered clear of any spotlight. Basking in crowds isn't his thing. His "shyness", bordering on social withdrawal, has always been a trait that's driven us to curse him countless times. But if the "price" of such total privacy is a masterpiece like "Untrue", an absolute landmark of electronic music in the new millennium and of music as a whole, then all we can do is bow before this "ghost" and his moving drift through the world of contemporary music.

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19/11/2017