Burial: the elusive artist

It’s a standard in today’s media for artists of all fields to get active on social media platforms. Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat Facebook – you name it. It’s easy, free advertising and marketing for the performers as they have all the tools imaginable to get closer to the fanbase with these services globally. Famous people are writing autobiographies, doing interviews, different advertising campaigns and just getting themselves out there in general, be it the news, TV or social media.

Rewind back to 2005, when Facebook was just a little inside website for US colleges, there was no Twitter, not to mention the social medias of the current smartphone era. There was MySpace, which was specifically targeted for music artist and fans. It was commonplace for artists of the early 00s to rise to popularity and major label deals through it.

One of them was Burial, an electronic music artist from London, UK. Eerie, chilled and soulful electronic beats that quickly garnered cult following. With his self-titled debut LP released by Hyperdub in 2006 he already got major attention and critical acclaim. Among all the attention it rose questions about the identity of the artist. There was only a short blog text and one blurry photo on his MySpace account and nothing else, but the music. He is often compared to another elusive yet world famous British artist, Banksy himself.

In 2007 Burial broke through to more mainstream with his sophomore album, Untrue. It received massive critical acclaim and was nominated for the Mercury Prize, even regarded as a likely winner. That’s when UK mainstream media really went after the identity of the artist: tabloid mag The Sun started a hunt for any information on Burial’s person, claiming that it was a pseudonym or a side project of another, already established artist and the whole profile was fake. In fact, they named several candidates among electronic artists from the UK (namely Four Tet, Aphex Twin, Fatboy Slim, Massive Attack).

This finally evoked a response from Burial himself, on his MySpace blog. He came out as just a guy called William Bevan from South London area and wanted to make music and keep it at that. Afterwards, he gave two interviews for select music outlets (FACT Magazine and FADER, respectively) where he explained his motives and background just slightly. He was influenced by the record store era, when records didn’t necessarily have labels or further information beyond titles.

The case of Burial proves that it is possible to be hugely popular and influential artist while retaining one’s privacy and using media outlets in one’s own terms. However, it clearly isn’t that easy and doesn’t come without its own challenges. To this date, he hasn’t performed live or appeared in media (outside one message delivered through his record label website) after the initial coming out and the silent plea to remain unrecognized.