Incognito's not what it used to be. When Burial kickstarted the trend a few years ago, secrecy felt more like an apt conceptual frame for his bodiless music than a gimmick, and investigative journalism was necessary to finally reveal his name. We bloggers and writers, it turned out, were endlessly tantalized by this austere modesty, and what began as an inevitable reaction to a culture of online oversharing currently verges on being a stock marketing strategy, to be cast off as soon as it gets the job done. You can now visit Pitchfork and read delightfully paradoxical headlines like "WU LYF Talk Mystique." Meanwhile, newcomer Dave.I.D makes his quasi-anonymous peers seem like Jandek by comparison.
Google around and you'll be amazed by the number of articles that trumpet the one-man-band's impregnable anonymity before revealing his location (South London), his birth name (David Andrew Hedges), his former profession (accounting), his recording digs (some kind of arty wooden box), his face (half-masked), his influences (everything from Liars to Chris & Cosey), details of his personality and process-- shit, I have uncles I know less about than Dave.I.D. But he claims that he was never trying to be a mystery man anyway. "It's just because I'm not famous," he insisted during a Quietus interview, in the enigmatic venue of a Dalston pub. Apparently, failing to aggressively market yourself is now tantamount to stealth.
There's no cultivated air of circumspection around Dave's music either. Response, following up on the Gangs EP, is a visceral work of raw crimson emotion and apocalyptic drama. It features dense, jaggedly careening electronic rock laced with industrial heaviness, post-punk serration, and proggy pretenses, as if TV on the Radio, Einstürzende Neubauten, PiL, and the Mars Volta had formed a Voltron-like juggernaut. Also like TVOTR, the music internally combusts with some kind of demonic conviction. Opener "When Everything is in its Place" sets a hulking, gothic synthesizer atop a foundation of echoing thwacks, and the tension between engulfing leads and baroquely bruising percussion hardly relents for the entire album. Dave harnesses his concussive beats, blatting synths, air-raid sirens, and growling guitar chords into a dyspeptic, thrillingly overbearing force. Softer touches like the shivering harpsichord of "SumR" and the warmly blurred new wave of "Oil" are the exceptions accentuating the rule.
Response is essentially loop-based, but feels less like an "electronic production" than the unconstrained and spontaneous work of a guy who wanted to make a heady rock epic but couldn't be bothered to collaborate. The firebombed atmosphere and abrading textures first command your attention, but Dave is a songwriter at heart, and melody, however seared and bludgeoned, is his anchor. On the downside, his vocals have petulant undertones that can dilute the dark grandeur of the music with a juvenile tinge. But they grew on me, and work especially well as additional musical grist rather than leads. "You Me Come For" starts off as jumbled and juddering as its title, but when it subsides into delicate backdrafts of synthesizer, Dave catches his voice in an unusually soulful refrain of "please let go" that cycles chillingly in the air. In this moment, you can feel the full measure of his flaws, his longings, and his uncanny powers: his specific, decidedly non-anonymous humanity.
