A few weeks ago a young British artist updated his MySpace blog and added a photo. No big deal I hear you cry, and ordinarily you'd be quite right. But on this occasion the details in question belonged to the spectral figure at the pinnacle of Britain’s ferociously underground dubstep movement, who beforehand had preferred the blanket anonymity of being known only as Burial. And in finally revealing his real identity, a man with the public profile of a spy became national news.
Since materialising in 2005 with the South London Boroughs EP, by shunning the mainstream press and becoming locked at the centre of a burgeoning scene, Burial rapidly became an anti figurehead swathed in a backlight of rumour and speculation. Frequently this kind of misdirection is created by PR’s and managers in lieu of talent, but any doubts about musical integrity were quickly dispelled by a stunning eponymous debut album. Rated by Metacritic as the second best work of 2007 - ahead of In Rainbows, Neon Bible and Boxer - it was an intricate hybrid that deftly blended the peculiarly minimalist inspiration of its urban roots with a startlingly evocative quality.
Drawing less heavily than much of the rest of the genre on dub reggae and instead using the chattering percussion of two step melded to the lush timbre-soaked electronica of Boards of Canada, it was both of dubstep but apart, work bathed in the almost surrealist light of a chilly English dawn. Almost immediately speculation began to proliferate about who could've been capable of moulding these largely nascent ingredients into something so fully formed. For a long period of time Richard D. James (AKA Aphex Twin) was the popular favourite, whilst wilder gossip threw Fatboy Slimmer Norman Cook's name into the melee.
Given that dubstep is still largely rooted in the metropolitan districts of places like South London and Bristol but in terms of sales, has displayed little capacity to crossover, the story may have remained something of an obscure cause celebre for years to come. All this changed however in July of this year, when Burial's second album Untrue received a nomination for the Mercury Prize, one of the most prestigious - and profile building - awards bestowed by the UK music industry. It's also a gong with a history of controversy; since first being awarded to Primal Scream's post acid rave opus Screamadelica in 1992, the judges have not been shy of nominations and winners from the more avant garde fringes of musical performance.
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