With jagged, fragile soundscapes, the mysterious Burial has created a modern classic, writes Jude Rogers

November nights were made for this music, not for the glitterball pop that is being hurried out of record company doors for the imminent party season, nor for the cosy nostalgia of Christmas records present and past, with their premature talk of snug gloves and warm fires. In November, darkness inches closer to our lives every day, and midnight blue British skies creep from late evening to teatime. This change of the seasons has an eeriness to it that requires a very different soundtrack. This is where Burial's music finds its natural home.

Burial is the pseudonym of a male musician from South London, who refuses to reveal his real identity. He could be a talented Peckham teen-ager or a bank manager from Bromley. The only thing we can assume is that he's a canny player - someone who knows the value of mystery, and how its cultivation can add to the atmospheric pull of whatever music he is making. It is a strategy that has worked. To dance music enthusiasts and critics, Burial is considered the king of dubstep, the genre that could be described as a coming together of dub's deep, heavy echoes, and the skittish drums of two-step garage. That, however, would not explain its extraordinarily original sound, its emotional charge, and its huge crossover potential.

Burial's eponymous debut album, released in May last year, laid out dubstep's manifesto. Full of murky fragments of melody, ghostly voices, metallic beats and the whoosh of wind and rain, it was a concept album representing a flooded South London in a globally warmed near future, inspired by Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans. It sounded cinematic, like a soundtrack to something apocalyptic and art-house, or a sinister journey alone along dark, urban streets. Its song titles matched the mood: "Night Bus", "Distant Lights" and "Broken Home", names that simmered with suggestions of isolation and tension.

It didn't play like any dance music I knew. Instead, it came across like atmospheric electronic music from another lineage entirely. Its strange, spacious textures brought to mind something deep and primitive; a kind of minimalism that you could draw back to the early medieval choral music of Pérotin and the drones of ancient folk. You could hear its modern shapes in the ambient experiments of Brian Eno, David Bowie's Berlin classic Low, Martin Hannett's sparse production of Joy Division, the melancholy techno of Orbital and Underworld, the shadowy trip-hop of Massive Attack, and the atmospheric post-rock of Mogwai. It was music with all adornments removed; a bare form of artistic expression that concentrated on the simple manipulation of sounds, and the physical movements of dynamics and tone.

Burial takes this further on Untrue, happening to make a record that is peculiarly accessible. Instead of focusing on textures, he foregrounds melodies and vocals, but doesn't let them strip away his music's essential strangeness. This results in the creation of a world that sounds both woozy and vital; jagged, fragile and brazenly alive. Put simply, imagine the sounds of a lucid dream or a fever, and you're imagining Untrue.

The first track, "Untitled", plays like an incantation. A voice murmurs about something binding forever, before footsteps and high, synthesised strings create an aura of fear. It's like a moment in film when you know something horrific is lurking around the corner. Lurking here instead is "Archangel", a track that unexpectedly pumps up the volume. Evoking the sultry heart of good modern R'n'B, it's the first of Burial's newly bold moments, and a track that you'd imagine hearing on TV as aural shorthand for atmosphere.

The difference between it and Burial's older tracks is that you can hear the lyrics - and shockingly, they wear sentiment fearlessly on their sleeves. Here, the vocalist is "kissing you", "holding you" and "loving you", and also begging you to "tell me I belong". "Etched Headplate" burns with a similar intensity, beginning with the hopeful tones of a young woman standing up for a man. "He's not setting out to hurt people. He's got a lot of love in him for, you know, for his mum, and his brother and girlfriend." The girl's thick London accent sounds both determined and resigned. "He actually, I think, wants to do the right thing." As the song morphs slowly into a gorgeous soup of disembodied vocals and doomy basslines, it is hard to know whether this wronged - and wrongdoing - character is destined for heaven or hell.

Given all this unease, what is most remarkable about Burial's music is its warmth. Tracks like the moodily sublime "In McDonald's" and "Shell of Light" suggest the neon-brightened environments of Edward Hopper paintings, and the comfort of knowing that your loneliness is shared. Elsewhere, "UK" and "Near Dark" play like underwater symphonies, and you wonder whether this is how we heard music in the womb. Whether a sad note is droning, a clattering beat is descending, or another raindrop is falling, there is something about this music that is both profound and elemental.

Burial's "Untrue" (Hyperdub) is out now

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