Released: 2024
When a musician effectively declares themselves as uninterested in the process of recognition it usually prompts their existing audience to gather round protectively. History tells us however that William Bevan – the artist formerly and currently known as Burial – really meant that shit.
Now, as the 20th anniversary of his self titled debut album approaches, the reclusive producer has done the almost unimaginable and stayed true to his word; rarely interviewed, he’s let his increasingly eclectic music do some of the talking for him, also living solely in the shorter formats since his second long player, 2007’s Untrue.
Since the turn of the decade the South Londoner had drifted into beatless, ambient forms, but his first outing for the rave-ordained XL label, Dreamfear collapsed the idea of looking inward. Full of past key phrasings – discombobulated divas, ripped breaks, vamping stabs – at almost thirteen minutes long it had the form of a micro-retro set thrown up at a party of dust masked ghosts. If you didn’t do it for the money, the fame, the drugs or the sex, what do you do it for? Somewhere deep in this hallucinatory groove was the answer.
The Voice Of Unreason 