The full transcript from Burial’s last interview to date has been released for the first time.
Writer Dan Hancox, who did the interview for The Guardian, shared the full 3,000-word version via his Honor Oak Riot newsletter this week. The conversation took place in 2007 just three weeks before of the release of the elusive producer’s seminal second album, Untrue.
Writing in his newsletter, Hancox said he agreed to meet the artist, real name Will Bevan, at Balham Station in South London. Bevan wore a bright red jacket “for identification purposes” as Hancox didn’t know what he looked like. After meeting, they did the interview at Hancox’s flat in nearby Tooting.
“Once we got talking; he speaks with a passion and intensity like few people I have ever met, let alone interviewed,” Hancox said. “But he was wary of exposure, of emerging into the light, when, and this is totally fair enough, all he ever wanted was to lurk in the shadows at the back of the club, and make tunes in his bedroom while everyone else was asleep.”
In the interview, Bevan told Hancox that he never made music with the idea of it being played in clubs in his mind. He said his tracks were “more influenced by when you come back from being out somewhere, in a minicab or a night bus, or walking home across London late at night, and you’ve still got the music kind of echoing in you”.
Read the full transcript of the interview here.
In August, Burial released his latest EP, Comafields / Imaginary Hospital, through longtime label home Hyperdub.
