​Film director Harmony Korine on working with Burial: “I never actually spoke with him”

US film director Harmony Korine has spoken about working with Burial on his latest film Baby Invasion, which premiered at Venice International Film Festival last weekend.

Speaking in a press conference after the film’s debut, Korine revealed that he’s never actually met or spoken in person with the elusive artist, despite working closely together on the soundtrack.

“I mean, Burial’s amazing. He’s a legend,” he said at the conference (via Variety). “We got in touch with each other, but I never actually met Burial and I never actually spoke with Burial.”

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According to Variety, when asked how the pair came to work together, Korine explained that he didn’t want to “reveal too much out of respect”, but had never spoken to him in person.

Instead, the pair spoke via voice and text platform Discord, or over the messaging service on PlayStation 5. “It was all done through Discord messages, and we’d kind of talk on PS5,” he said. “And then the music was sent through PS5.”

During the conference, Korine also spoke about the interactive elements of the new film, which is described as a "dystopian thriller". It follows the release of last year’s ‘Aggro Dr1ft’ featuring Travis Scott in his first-ever film role.

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“When we release the film, there’ll be a way to watch it through your phone, but there’ll be certain codes within the movie that’ll take you to other movies,” he explained. “So the film, what you’re seeing, is just a base layer film. There’ll be three or four other sub films.”

‘Baby Invasion’ marks Burial’s second venture into film scoring following his work on Andrea Arnold’s 2024 movie Bird, which debuted at Cannes Film Festival in May.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Assistant Editor, follow her on Twitter.