I. A Rumor Exhumed

Was it really him? That was the question many electronic music fans were asking last weekend while standing inside of a smoke-filled chamber carved out of rock, hundreds of feet beneath the Earth. The "him" in question was Burial, and while the idea would normally be all but unthinkable—as far as I know, he's never played live or even DJed—this was the "Surprise" edition of Krakow, Poland’s annual Unsound Festival, and, with a significant chunk of the lineup kept secret until the moment the artists took the stage, all bets were off.

It certainly sounded like Burial, though it was impossible to say who the hooded figure on stage actually was. The 800-capacity hall deep in a former salt mine was already plenty smoky, but when the shadowy, unannounced act began, the lights dimmed further, the dry ice machines went into overdrive, and the atmosphere turned thick as midnight on the moors.

The set began with what sounded like the squeaking of sneakers on a basketball court; there were rustling noises and soft, backwards strings; shuffling UK garage beats and mournful melodies were threaded with the sound of running water and snippets of dialogue. There were bees, too—swarming, buzzing bees that swelled in volume between tracks. It took me three or four songs to go from thinking, "This sure sounds like Burial," to, "How could this be anyone but Burial?"

By now you may have read Hyperdub's disavowal that it was Burial on stage; the artist’s longtime home tweeted that it "must be" label head Kode9, which I suppose is a good possibility—although the fact that they didn't disavow the entire thing suggests that it was probably-most-definitely Burial's music we were all listening to. (Also, when I ran into Kode9 later that night and congratulated him on "his" set, he said that he hadn't played, so hey—either he or his label was lying.)

In the end, it doesn't really matter who filled out the hoodie while they hit the start button on the CD player; the audience was treated to 30 or 40 minutes of what was probably unreleased Burial material, and that's the closest any of us will ever get, most likely, to "seeing" him "play live." And all while literally buried underground.