Burial: Unedited Transcript

Wire: I saw you mention it in another interview, that when you’re used to making tunes and looking at a screen, you can just see that grid when you hear the tunes.

Burial: I’ve seen people using sequencers and I’ve tried hard to use them but it’s blocks in different colours and I'm only used to just seeing the waves. I don’t need to listen much to the drums because I know they look nice, like a fishbone, rigged up to be kind of skitty, sharp. My tunes are a bit rubbish and messy but it's all I know. One day I want to make a tune people can have a dance to, I've tried.

Wire: What did you think when people were saying that you hadn’t produced it all in Sound Forge, it’s a scam.

Burial: Who?

Wire: People on the internet, saying he can’t possibly have done that whole album in Sound Forge.

Burial: Really? Yeah well I did. I'll leave those people to their internet or whatever. Yeah I wish sometimes that I’d gone to college to learn music production, but other times I’m like ‘no, fuck, I’m happy I didn’t’.

I don’t really go on the internet, it’s like a ouija board, it’s like letting someone into your head, behind your eyes. It lets randoms in.

Wire: The tracks you made and discarded. Do they still exist?

Burial: Some of them I lost because my computer’s dead. But I’ve got a few of them and I might resurrect them. I lost faith. I want to learn but its difficult, I've made mistakes. Next album maybe I'll gather my forces, make a true darkside Burial album. Step up and do it.

Wire: One of the greatest things about your music is the sense of place, and it’s so specific to South London. When I first heard it, I lived in South London and as I listened to the LP walking around, it was a perfect fit.

Burial: Thanks for saying that. I spend a lot of time wandering around London, I always have. Sometimes it’s because I’ve got somewhere to go, sometimes it’s because I haven't got anywhere to go. So I’d be wandering endlessly, getting in places. Being on your own listening to headphones is not a million miles away from being in a club surrounded by people, you let it in, you’re more open to it. Sometimes you get that feeling like a ghost touched your heart, like someone walks with you. In London, there’s a kind of atmosphere that everyone knows about but if you talk about it, it just sort of disappears. London’s part of me, I'm proud of it but it can be dark, sometimes recently I don't even recognize it.

It's about being on a night bus, or with your mates, walking home across your city on your own late at night, or being in a situation with your girlfriend or boyfriend, or coming back from a club, or putting tunes on an falling asleep. If your well into tunes, your life starts to weave around them. I’d rather hear a tune about real life, about the UK, than some US hiphop. 'I’m in the club with your girl' type thing. I love r&b tunes and vocals but I like hearing things that are true to the UK, like drum&bass and dubstep, Once you've heard that underground music in your life, other stuff just sounds like a fucking advert, imported.


Wire: Even though your music really captures what it’s like to be in the UK, it connects with other people outside Britain too.

Burial: If you alone could hear someone upset on the other side of the world, then maybe then you could do something about it. I was once in these mountains, you’d see these fires, other people sleeping out in the mountains, traders across the border, and that gives you this feeling, night time, awareness of other people sleeping. But all it is just a fire light. You see their firelight and you know they are there, that’s all you need. That’s what ties cities to places that aren’t together, deserts, forests, people. You watch over your city or area at night, you see the distant lights, fires burning in other places.

Wire: Angels are mentioned a few times on the album. Why is that?

Burial: You see people, and you’re disconnected from them, they mean fuck-all to you, but other times you can invest everything in someone you don’t even know, silently believe in them, it might be on the underground or in a shop or something. You hope people are doing that with you as well. Some people, even when they’re quite young, and they’re in difficulty, maybe taking a battering in their life, but they still handle themselves with grace. I hope most people can be like that, hold it together, I wanted this album to be for people in that situation.

It's easy to fall away and fuck up and for many people there's no safety net. Sometimes one tune can mean everything, it's like a talisman.

Wire: The people on the album seem like wounded or mutilated angels: angels whose wings have been clipped, or who have been trapped or betrayed.

Burial: Yeah. When you think of some of things people go through, everyday troubles, relationship things, other stuff. Everyone knows those sorts of feelings. I wanted to do songs about that low-key stuff. There are a couple of tunes with the vocal to do with angels on it. Sometimes I’d be hearing a song … I was worrying, I’d made all these dark tunes, and I played ‘em to my mum, and she didn’t like them. I was going to give up, but she was sweet, telling me, ‘just do a tune, fuck everyone off, don’t worry about it.’ My dog died, and I was totally gutted about that. She was just like, ‘make a tune, cheer up, stay up late, make a cup of tea’. And I rang her mobile twenty minutes later and I’d made that ‘Archangel’ tune, and I was like, ‘I’ve made the tune, the tune you told me to make.’ And I heard this vocal and it doesn't say it but it sounds like ‘archangel’. I like pitching down female vocals so they sound male, and pitching up male vocals so they sound like a girl singing. It can sound sexy as fuck.

Wire: That works. When I listen to the record, I can’t work out whether the vocals belong to males or females. And angels aren’t supposed to have no gender.

Burial: Really? Well that works nice with my tunes, kind of half boy half girl, but that can be dark too. Sometimes in a mirror people see the devil's face for a second, that wrong aspect, the eyes, in your own. When you are young you are pushed around by forces that are nothing to do with you. You’re lost, most of the time you don't understand what’s going on with yourself, with anything.

Wire: I’ve read you say that you think it’s Ok for women to like your music, that people shouldn’t be frightened of making tunes that women will like.

Burial: But girls love the dark tunes too. I understand that moody thing, but some dance music is too male. It's dry, Some jungle tunes had a balance, the glow, the moodiness that comes from the presence of both girls and boys in the same tune, there's tension because it’s close, but sometimes perfect together. Men sometimes exist in this place where they don’t have a fucking clue what girls go through and vice versa. I was brought up most by my mum, I’m my mum’s son. I look like her. I am her. I own female dogs. I don't know what I'm trying to say, but with my new album – blokes might be, like, ‘what the fuck is this?’ But hopefully their girlfriends will like it.