NASA Scientist Identified as Voice From Burial’s Rival Dealer EP

NASA Scientist Identified as Voice From Burial's Rival Dealer EP

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.

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