Burial.

Just after Christmas 2007 I was in London, trawling the post-xmas sales and trying in vain to spend money that I'd decided upon spending in my brain. This means I didn't physically have any money, I'd just allowed for a further kick into the overdraft. I was in Fopp in Covent Garden, looking at all their recommendations for their albums of 2007. My eyes scanned across the above CD - "Untrue" by Burial. I had no idea who Burial was. Or were - as I'd immediately dismissed "them" as some low-rent metal band due to the name. I stopped reading music magazines many moons ago and as Burial was getting no radio play anywhere I had no idea what music the album contained. I then forgot about it and bought more Mogwai albums, as was the norm for me at the time.

A couple of months later I was driving to Beverley in Yorkshire for a gig. I'd forgotten any CDs for the journey so was forced to listen to Radio 1, where Radiohead were running the Evening Session. They played "Archangel" by Burial and it was one of those beuatiful moments where you hear a song and you need to do everything within you to obtain that song as soon as possible. I actually pulled onto the hard shoulder so I could write down in my notepad the name of the song and the artist, eventually remembering the little story above.

I downloaded "Untrue" the next day and was immediately blown away by it. It is the most frightening, beautiful, haunting and amazing album you will ever listen to. I recommend listening to it LOUD through a very good pair of headphones. In the dark. You will never, ever hear another album like it.

I can't describe it. Burial is a dubstep artist but the album is a twisted, ambient, deformed version of dubstep that virtually invents a new genre of music. I have not stopped boring people about this album at all in the past few months because I honestly feel everyone who has an interest in music should own a dozen copies of it. Seriously. Get it. Now.

The thing I loved about the album when I got it was that Burial was, then at least, anonymous. He's now been "outed" as William Bevan, a 2o something from South London who just happened to want to be anonymous. As the press have been doing since he got nominated for the Mercury Prize though, I spent ages trying to figure out who he was. I mean, how could you make something of such beauty, have such immense critical acclaim and be in such enormous demand as a remixer and stay anonymous unless you were already famous? The papers have recently published their theories of him being Aphex Twin or Fatboy Slim - my theory was that he was Mike Skinner. Yeah, laugh it up.

So yeah, the Mercury Prize. I've always looked at the nominations for this and picked my favourite, but the record I have picked has always been the lesser of many evils - picking something I'm ok with and don't hate. But with "Untrue" - I want it to win SO badly. I will petition Mercury themselves if I have to. This is not some pointless indie rock, or pretentious singer-songwriter-wankery - this is a project born of love to a genius, an album like no other on the planet. And it's pushed boundaries so far that they're just a dot to us now.

Get it. Here ends the advert ;)

And for those people in the UK, put BBC 3 on and watch the QOTSA set from Reading. Best lve band on Earth.