A Mystery Solved

About four or three years ago I was looking at AllMusic's profile on Richard Butler and I checked out his discography. It showed his solo album of course but there was also an album that I'd never even heard of. I remember clicking on the album to see what it was and that was pretty much it. The album went in the back of my mind and I had forgotten about it, until recently I went to Richard's page on AllMusic and I saw that strange album again. The album was called Burial and it's by this obscure British band named Death In June. They formed in the early eighties and their music is mostly neofolk and experimental. They released some albums and I think they are still around. Burial was Death In June's second album and was released in 1984 on vinyl only. Burial is both a studio and live album, with the first side containing the studio tracks while the second side has live recordings from a concert Death In June did back in 1983. In the 1990s Burial was released on compact disc and in recent years it had gotten vinyl and CD reissues.

Front cover of Death In June's Burial, 1984.

At the end of my Psychedelic Furs biography it listed the discography of The Furs and its band members and on Richard Butler's section Burial wasn't listed. Then on Discog's discography for Richard the album was not on there either. When I went to Burial's page on AllMusic and checked the credits, Richard Butler was only credited as "primary artist." But the weird thing is I checked Wikipedia and on both Death In June's and Burial's articles there was no mention of Richard Butler. My curiosity peaked, and I started to wonder so many things. Did Richard work with Death In June? Was this a collaboration that no one knew about? Did Richard Butler provide vocals on a few of the studio songs? Did Richard really work on the album or not?

So I went to Discogs to see if they have a page for Death In June and there was. I went to the page and on the band's list of members, to my surprise, Richard Butler's name was on there but crossed out, as in he was a former member. But for some reason there was a 6 by his name in parentheses, and I clicked on the name to see why. Well, it turned out it wasn't the Richard Butler after all! It was a different guy that had the same name, and it even showed his middle name which was Mark (the real Richard Butler's middle name is Lofthouse). On the description it said that the other Richard Butler guy was the keyboardist for Death In June from 1983 to 1984.

I'm absolutely relieved to know the real results, and the mystery was solved successfully. I don't get why Allmusic put Burial on their discography for Richard Butler even though the real Richard never worked on the album. Hope Allmusic will know the truth and remove the album so that it won't confuse many people like me, especially if they're Psychedelic Furs fans.