On Burial’s 2014 EP Rival Dealer, the producer threaded the release with vocal samples that had mysterious origins. In particular, a woman’s voice that spoke about space, astronomy and an outer space experience stood out.
Last month, the website Yeah I Got tracked down the source of that memorable voice, NASA scientist Melissa Dawson Higgins. An excerpt from their talk:
How did you feel when you learned that your voice had been used in some UK electronic music tracks? How did you discover it?
I had actually not known about the tracks until I received an email from a Burial fan in Denmark informing me about the songs and asking if it was me in the tracks. Once I told him that it was me, he said that he had a sudden urge to tell me and that he found my voice “incredibly fascinating and beautiful.” Perhaps I should be grateful that [Burial] made my voice sound better! Anyway, once I had found out about the song, I dug around a little and gave it a listen. It was certainly not an unpleasant discovery, but more a perplexing discovery.
About the “Come Down to Us” sample:
In one of the tracks, Burial edited your responses to imply that you were saying you’d seen something “come down to us” from space. Was this at all troubling, from a professional perspective?
It was quite strange to have my words shifted around to make it sound like I said “…come down to us.” After I listened to it a couple of times, it became a little funny. Especially since you could tell that several pieces of my interview were spliced together to make it sound like I said that.
Here’s the original audio from which Burial sourced the samples. YouTube commenters have pointed out that the time codes 0:41, 1:29, 2:45, 2:56, 3:21, 5:28, 9:50 feature the specific clips.
