Burial- Untrue
Burial, born as William Emmanuel Bevan is a producer and artist from South London, United Kingdom. Untrue went on to be nominated for a mercury music prize in 2008, causing Burial to reveal his true identity. Burial’s workflow is unique to himself which is what contributes towards his iconic sound.
Untrue was created using a sound processing software known as Soundforge. Unlike Digital Audio Workstations such as Logic and Ableton, Soundforge doesn’t use a grid method or quantisation meaning that every sound will be slightly off-grid. This gives Burial’s drums a unique feeling to them as there is a consistent detachment throughout all the drum grooves in Untrue. Another unique aspect of Burial’s workflow is his use of vocals from other tracks. As opposed to using his own vocals or a vocalist for his own tracks Burial instead uses vocal samples from other tracks and media. One example of this can be seen in the vocals from Beyoncé’s 2006 track Resentment. Burial takes these same vocals and pitch shifts them down as well as using formant shift creating a sound closer to that of a male baritone singer over that of Beyoncé’s voice. Burial also chops the vocal to make it repeat the same line ‘And it’s all because you lied/To the way I feel inside.’ This focus on fewer lyrics puts emphasis on these two lines adding to the overall dark aesthetic of the track.
Regardless of the use of the vocal from one of the world’s biggest pop stars in Beyoncé, Burial also uses much more obscure sampling in Untrue. In his track Etched Headplate Burial uses a vocal sample from a YouTube video in which a girl named Alicia Robinson sings a cover of the track Angel by Amanda Perez. She performs the cover sat to a cheap camera with poor audio quality. This lack in audio quality adds to the lo-fi feel of the track. It also gives us a greater insight into Burials workflow. It suggests to us that Burial often deep dives through the internet to find samples he feels add the emotion and feel he wants in a track.
Burial makes use of many different forms of media. As well as the use of distinctive vocals from music and YouTube Burial also takes samples from video games such as sounds from his favourite game series, Metal Gear Solid. On Burial’s most well-known track to date Archangel (27,984,907 streams as of 3/12/2003) Burial samples the intro music to Metal Gear Solid 2. Burial also often builds much of his percussion around sound effects from Metal Gear Solid such as the sound of guns reloading or firing. These sounds are very difficult to distinguish as he uses vast processing to make them unrecognisable from their original sound.
Overall, Burial’s use of Soundforge and sampling are in my opinion from a workflow stand point what gives him such a unique sound. His lack of a grid system gives his tracks an off-kilter swing. His use of samples is unique to him, his interests and his passions making his tracks deeply personal.
Bibliography:
Aaron Russell (2013) ‘When Burial sampled Metal Gear Solid’, YouTube [Preprint]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rksXDcPxd6U (Accessed: 16 November 2023).
Hawthorn, C. (2017). Resident Advisor . 6 November. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et5B-zfAIIo&t=141s (Accessed: 16 November 2023).
MacNeill, K.M. (2016) ‘Burial – 10 of the best’, the guardian, 19 October. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/oct/19/burial-10-of-the-best (Accessed: 16 November 2023).