Burial / Tunes 2011-2019 / 2013
Hiders
tender, melancholic, quietly hopeful with an undertow of dread
A sparse vocal collage built from looped, pitch-shifted samples that repeat words of comfort and protection over what is presumably Burial's characteristic hiss-laden, broken-beat production. The 'lyrics' function less as a narrative than as a set of talismanic phrases -- reassurance offered to an unnamed, vulnerable figure who may be a child.
protection and vulnerability isolation childhood salvation imagery longing for rescue
Who's speaking
An unidentified voice (assembled from samples) addresses a 'you' directly, promising protection; a second voice, possibly the addressee, seems to answer near the end with a note of uncertainty about being taken away. The perspective is fragmented and unstable, since the words are clearly lifted and recombined rather than delivered as a single continuous confession.
What happens
The piece opens with a bare statement locating a child somewhere unspecified, then moves into a repeated declaration that casts the addressee as a sunrise -- something arriving out of darkness. A vow of permanent protection follows, repeated as if to steady itself. The reassurance escalates into direct comfort about not needing to be alone, before the piece closes on a shift: an invitation to come down, followed by a question about being taken away, which unsettles the preceding warmth.
How it's built
There's no verse-chorus architecture in the pop sense; instead phrases loop and mutate, gaining and losing emphasis with each pass, typical of Burial's method of chopping vocal samples into small units and letting the production's rhythm and space do the narrative work. The final two lines function as a coda that reframes everything before it.
Section by section
Opening line
“There's a kid somewhere”
The track begins with a plain, almost documentary statement that establishes a vulnerable figure without context -- no name, no location, just existence. This vagueness is characteristic of Burial's fondness for isolated, half-overheard phrases that suggest a larger story left offscreen.
Sunrise refrain
“You are the sunrise”
The repeated equation of the addressee with sunrise reframes them as an event rather than a person -- something that happens to the speaker, arriving after darkness. Its repetition suggests both comfort and a kind of desperate self-persuasion, as though the speaker needs to keep saying it to believe it.
Protection vow
“I will always protect you”
This is the emotional center of the piece: an unconditional promise, doubled immediately by repetition, that reads as either deeply reassuring or slightly anxious in its insistence, given how sparse and haunted the surrounding sound design tends to be in Burial's work.
Comfort passage
The direct assurance that the addressee doesn't have to be alone extends the earlier vow into companionship rather than mere defense, shifting the emotional register from guarding against a threat to alleviating loneliness itself.
Closing lines
“you going to take me away”
The final invitation and question destabilize the preceding comfort. Instead of resolving into safety, the piece ends on an open, almost pleading uncertainty about departure or rescue, which could be read as hopeful surrender or as a note of fear folded into the sunrise imagery.
Craft
- repetition/incantation
- The recurring assurance about sunrise and protection works like a chant, mimicking lullaby or ritual speech, reinforcing the emotional stakes through insistence rather than development.
- metaphor
- Equating the addressee with a sunrise casts them as a source of light after darkness, aligning personal comfort with a natural, inevitable event.
- vocal sampling as device
- Because Burial constructs lyrics from disembodied, treated vocal fragments, the words themselves carry a ghostly, secondhand quality -- comfort delivered by a voice that sounds mediated, distant, almost recovered from memory or transmission rather than spoken live.
- volta
- The closing question about being taken away reverses the poem's earlier certainty, turning a lullaby of protection into something closer to an uncertain summons or departure.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats this as a fragmented lullaby: a protective, parental or guardian voice reassuring a lost or lonely figure, built from samples that give the reassurance a spectral, secondhand quality, as if overheard rather than spoken firsthand. An alternative reading takes the 'kid' and 'sunrise' language as self-directed, with the narrator speaking to a younger or more vulnerable version of themselves, and the closing question about being taken away as an ambiguous gesture toward death, rescue, or transformation rather than literal childhood care.
Context
Burial is known for constructing tracks from chopped vocal samples -- often taken from R&B, garage, or film dialogue -- rather than writing conventional lyrics, and for building an atmosphere of urban solitude and rain-soaked nocturnal melancholy around them. 'Hiders' appears on the 'Tunes 2011-2019' compilation of singles and B-sides, but I don't have reliable information about its original single release, sample sources, or Bevan's stated intentions for this specific track, so any claims about its literal origin should be treated cautiously.
Listen for
- the way each repetition of the sunrise phrase shifts slightly in pitch or texture, changing its emotional weight
- the contrast between the warmth of the vocal content and the coldness or sparseness typical of Burial's surrounding production
- the sudden tonal shift in the closing lines, where certainty gives way to a question
- how silence and space around the vocal samples function almost as another instrument, framing the words as fragile or fleeting
About Burial
William Emmanuel Bevan, known by his recording alias Burial, is a British electronic musician from South London. Initially anonymous, Burial became the first artist signed to Kode9's electronic label Hyperdub in 2005.
b. 1979 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue