If you know the true identity of London dubstep artist Burial,
consider yourself a member of a very exclusive circle. Steve
Goodman, who runs London's Hyperdub label, knows-- he cuts
Burial's royalty checks, after all-- but if anyone else does, no
one has yet had the temerity to out Burial's inner Peter Parker.
Read an interview or two with the artist himself, and you'll
quickly figure out why he's chosen to remain anonymous. Burial's
decision not to let a backstory be a part of the music doesn't
come across as a strategy calculated to maximize hype, but just
the opposite: a means of keeping the music pure, faceless,
answerable only to itself-- a closed system.  The critical
success of Burial's self-titled first album threatened to derail
the project's mystery, however. A collection of tunes recorded
at home on a low-tech setup over the course of many years,
Burial-- moody, brooding, by turns supple and sullen-- shot to
the top of many critics' best-of lists last year. To judge from
a recent interview with Bu