Name: Bex Burch
Nationality: British
Occupation: Composer, percussionist, producer, instrument maker
Current release: Bex Burch's debut full-length album There is only love and fear is out October 20th 2023 via International Anthem.

If you enjoyed this Bex Burch interview and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, and Facebook.

To keep reading, head over to more Bex Burch as part of our Vula Viel interview.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, or perhaps letting go of a lot of thoughts about this in the last few years. What if I’m not a musician? What does that even mean? Who actually am I if I don’t hang my identity on that coat hanger? And embracing the emptiness is both terrifying and also the place where all creativity comes from. Being open and listening in the nothing; that’s where I am trying to be.

When I’m really me, that’s when I’ll truly resonate with myself. And when someone truly resonates with themselves, we feel it. Those waves of energy come out all around and reach me and lift me up. And when I witness someone doing that, this lifting inspires me, not to try and be like that person, but to try and be as much myself as that person is themselves.

So, it means that if I am truly resonating with myself, other people feel those waves from me too. What an incredibly humbling thought, that my waves could lift someone else.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

The main work is getting to sit down for the practice. Making the space to create, to which I have so many clever ways of resisting.

Simple discipline helps me, a daily practice, no pressure, just making time every day. Sometimes it’s not to make sounds, sometimes it’s making them, sometimes it’s ideas and composition and shape and lyrics and a whole symphony of voices and instruments …

But there is no rule as to what a finished work is or whether that even exists.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I find the process of creating a wholistic affair. Every moment is an equally important part and can lead to any other part, no linear order, more like spirals. More than anything, it involves being present of the rhythm and flow. I like to run and be outside in nature, that reminds me what flow feels like. I do like a clean workspace, and tidying can be a great part.

Breathing and asking myself what sounds do I like today, playing the instruments that I hear in answer. Sometimes the rhythm of a day goes to composition, or editing, or mixing, or recording too.

Essentially, if I’m present, I’m doing my job.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I don’t force a “creating mindset”, I’m not sure I agree with the term. We are all creative beings, and just have to get out of the way for this. It’s one of the hardest things to give ourselves the space to create and for me, ritual helps with that. Perhaps ritual is the ‘mindset’.

Rituals can be as common place as going outside. Or leaving my phone at home. Smell is very important to me, so I also have my tools to make my space smell how I need it, or clothes too that can feel like armor. I’ve already mentioned exercise as important, and being in nature, and the ritual mindset with these means a certain intention that opens my senses.

I also use certain rituals that I have been given over the years based around intention. I mention this for the full context, alongside the idea that ritual can be all things.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

Listening. I’m not looking towards writing a piece. This happens or it doesn’t happen and it’s all the same. If I was a part of nature (which I am), just doing my job, what would I do?

So again, the main challenge is sitting down to ‘be’. And I’m getting better. It’s become just a normal part of a normal day. Repeat repeat repeat.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

Discovered! I love this idea of discovering ... And yes, it doesn’t ever feel like I create in the sense of invent music. That would perhaps just be for my ego.

Creating for me isn’t different from discovering. They feed each other. Discovery is about more than music. The more I let go of trying to pretend I’m a musician or what I ‘should’ be doing or sounding like, the more I actually learn about myself including but not limited to the sounds I like.

It’s a feedback loop: I make what I need to make. And through that I discover myself, and create from there. And round and round we go.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

In writing to you, I can see that I have a way that seems to work often. But that can and has changed over time gradually and profoundly.

With this last album, I love the story telling crafting and editing. This could be before or after recording, either writing / working on the instruments, or post-composition of editing in a DAW. And then these two ways of crafting influence each other.

For example, I purposefully recorded ‘There is only love and fear’ completely as free improvisations. Then, listening to the 32 days of material, I mixed, recorded and edited themes or structures that I felt the music needed, including overdubs to bring back melodies, or extending a moment of arrival, or using heard sounds from sound walks to create the world that is this 40 mins album.

And the last 9 months I’ve been post-post de-composing; crafting the album version into a distilled live solo version and really loving new dimensions that are coming out for me. Discovering what the essence of the music is with the limitations of my playing. Learning what it is I bring. I’m getting to know myself so intensely. It feels super close to knowing who I am.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

Control is what it feels like when I’m getting in the way. Even the minute attention to detail tasks I’m doing is still asking ‘what does this need from me?’

Important to note the difference between responsibility and control. I did craft and choose and have a reason for every note and every sound on this album. I know why everything is there and not there. I took responsibility, and finished a work – the fact of which I’m super proud.

And now, it’s about to be released, which is the perfect word, and it is no longer mine. How other people experience it or even how I now experience it – is out of my hands.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Yes! This is all there is. Alternative to what?

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

It doesn’t have any smoke or mirrors to it. Just make the time. Go create. And that’s it. Sometimes I can ‘make a thing’ sometimes I have to let go of that, because that can trick me into not really being present. But at least I’m there.

Everything we have been talking about is elementally spirituality. I’ve been through some very real work of choosing to live and create. And this work is all the things, nitty gritty, ugly, mistakes-ridden, pragmatic and life-saving spirituality. God and spirit and nature and divinity and sound and silence.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practice?

At all stages, improvement and refinement are creativity.

Finishing something is like every decision, an intuition. And a brave one. I have a quiet but strong intuitive voice, and more and more, I trust it.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Same as everything above. All things are important. And I am 100% involved even if that is to trust someone else’s ear and let go.

I have loved my recent start as producer the last few years. Mixing and editing myself, and also working on final mixes or masters with other engineers (Leafcutter John, Alex Bonney, Dave Vettraino, David Allen) who can elevate my mixes and production.

I’m currently working on something where I feel I’ve done everything I can but know it’s not finished. Then letting it go and trusting someone to be producer is a real-life reminder that the music wasn’t invented by me, but we are all accessing something else, together.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I’m finding it super interesting to note for this current album, there’s something in the music that isn’t finished with me yet.

I recorded in June 2022, then mixed and composed meticulously for 6 months, finishing the album December last year. Yet I have since been finding my way into this music in another way in my solo ‘de-composition’ and through that work, I’m also writing by accident. So, there’s something more here, this music has more to tell me.

Yes, I come to the emptiness. But I absolutely don’t see it as ‘not’ creativity ... or a state to ‘return’ to creativity from. Emptiness is from where all creativity comes. If only I’m brave enough to face and fall into it.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I don’t think there’s any accident that I like playing big instruments and the physicality of percussion. It’s a way I express the things I experience. It’s all mundane, and it’s all profound. My most recent project is non-musical work. And it can feed into and turn into music too but that’s not the point.

I went to an exhibition at the Tate Modern a few months ago where I saw Cornelia Parker’s photography work. Some of a leak in between bricks, or of plaster fixing a prison wall before it was painted over … The simplest of beauties attacked the artist, and she shared them exactly.

I guess my artform is less exact, but this can change. The only thing that doesn’t change is the impetus and beauties which attack me are in everything.