The Caretaker aka Leyland Kirby aka V/vm aka The Stranger

I'm quite sure Boomkat will see the re-release as "something special" and will send out an e-mail once you can (pre-)order, you could sign up for that.

I got my copy first time around. Not counting on added tracks or anything (which is fine).

I know a lot of people are waiting on re-presses of releases
and in particular 'An empty bliss beyond this World'.

All I can say is it will happen so please remain patient.

Please to add yourself to the mailing list for news
about that so you don't miss them.

from - http://www.brainwashed.com/vvm/

Not seen it mentoined recently but don't you all sleep on Persistent Repetition of Phrases, which is sublime.

Sorry for linking to my own piece here but I'm guessing this constitutes something LJK fans will be interested in.

James Kirby kills off The Caretaker with new album Everywhere At The End Of Time released in six parts over the next three years.

Boom! https://boomkat.com/products/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time?utm_source=Boomkat+Production&utm_campaign=cee1adf164-The_Caretaker_Everywhere_At_The_End_Of_T9_22_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f7c1f6eb34-cee1adf164-121478162

Great great piece Doran!

"People who bought this also bought:
Daphne & Celeste You & I Alone"

Agreed. Nice feature, John.

A fiver for the whole project from Bandcamp:

https://thecaretaker.bandcamp.com/album/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time

Yeah, thx for sharing!

Immediately ordered the lp. Think it's the right way to go for the Caretaker, to end it conceptually, with six lp's. It's how it began, more or less.

http://www.thefader.com/2016/09/22/the-caretaker-dementia-everywhere-at-the-end-of-time
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/news/caretaker-diagnosed-dementia-release-six-works-recreating-its-progression-over-next-three-years

so, uh, he doesn't actually have dementia does he??

Wtf?!

That's terrible.

(Fader and TMT I mean, of course he himself does not have dementia. Fools)

Also there will be a re-pressing on vinyl of 'An Empty Bliss Beyond This World' available on October the 6th.

Thanks for the kind words! And no, he doesn't have dementia.

Why did that article say he had early onset dementia? I also emailed with him a couple weeks ago and he was extremely nice.

the music's evolution across the album releases is like a simulated dementia
which was really misinterpreted

Has he said anywhere where the idea has come from? That is, whether it is completely "imagined" or whether it has been "observed"? (Eg. in his family or through, say, work).

UPDATE: Kirby has apparently just given his moniker The Caretaker “dementia.”

that's kinda cool actually

i mean from a creative standpoint.. kind of an "oblique strategy"

Why did that article say he had early onset dementia?

I can see why they'd be confused, the media promo stuff says he has it."'Everywhere at the end of time' is a new and finite series of works exploring dementia, its advance and its totality. It is the sound of the journey The Caretaker will make after being diagnosed as having early onset dementia."

> Has he said anywhere where the idea has come from?

William Basinski's Disintegration Loops?

He's done a fair amount of research on the subject, from what i've read in previous articles. I think when Empty Bliss was released he mentioned it.

that new vinyl sold out pretty fast!

I'll do my best to bump this thread if I see reissue (which may also be cd?) available before october 6th

> Has he said anywhere where the idea has come from?

William Basinski's Disintegration Loops?

― koogs, Friday, 23 September 2016 07:50 (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, ha. Yeah. I was kind of wondering whether it was a "I like music that sounds like it is disintegrating. I know, I'll make a concept album about dementia" or whether it was more, I dunno, profound than that.

the whole caretaker business has been about memory and fuzzy nostalgia, makes sense that he'd end it with the destruction of memory

thanks for the head's up on this. preordered the repress via boomkat, which is supposed to come out in early November.

great piece, Doran, btw! i hadn't read an interview with him before but he seems very likable in addition to making wonderful music

he stuck around a festival I was at after he'd performed earlier in the week. we had a brief conversation about how the bar at one of the venues had a horrible whiskey selection.

btw he drinks a lot of jameson but likes highland park scotch iirc

ha, i was just reading an old pitchfork review of his, which ends by noting that he gave away the album for free on his bandcamp but requested that he be paid in birthday shots of whiskey

a man after my own heart

Cheers! xxxxp

I love the Disintegration Loops to death but The Caretaker stuff is a lot more specifically 'about' various forms of memory degradation not 'cultural memory' - as the MP3 collection Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia in 2005 and tracks such as Von Restorff Effect, Unmasking Alzheimer's and Libet's Delay suggest.

despite the new one being posted up on his bandcamp, i'm going to hold off until i get the LP in the mail. really looking forward to seeing how this works in the latter stages of the series, esp after reading his thinking about it in Doran's piece. he mentions that he enjoys the challenge of how to present total confusion in a listenable way, and i look forward to seeing how he goes about it! also love the idea of the albums reincorporating earlier releases in various ways, even though i'm only familiar with approximately 0.1% of his 32084250234 pieces of music

also i'm personally interested in art that tackles memory loss, along with a sense of not having a home to return to. i'm an idiot for not listening to his stuff before, despite multiple recommendations from others

Absolutely John. That's why I was a bit miffed about the "Caretaker has dementia!" articles. His musical research alone in this field is unparalleled.

(Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia is not just an MP3 collection btw, I cherish the physical six cd version of it!)

Xxp

I'm holding off till the vinyl arrives, too. Any day now, hopefully!

XP: you lucky bugger. I slept on that CD box and some of the more recent vinyl. I have the first few original CDs in the ziplock bags though.

Ha, was being a bit facetious about disintegration loops comparison. And Haunted Ballroom predates it anyway.

disintegration loops are overrated, I say!

XP: Fair dos but the conceptual memory loss side of The Caretaker only kicks in with TPAA in 2005.

The Empty Bliss reissue is up over at Boomkat. Looks like the purple wax is sold out already, but the black is still available.

Purple already on discogs for silly money :(

just ordered black :D

Fuck! How does this happen?

Despite its melancholy theme, the new one is beautiful drifting off to sleep music

I really like the new one. Maybe if I played it as many times as I played Empty Bliss, I'd love it just as much.

the closing sentences of the pitchfork review:

As Kirby goes all in on this coup de grâce, one can’t help but notice that he’s using other people’s music to channel the subjectivity of other people’s medical condition, and wonder where that gets us.

Empty Bliss rested on studies of Alzheimer’s patients and music, which seemed to keep a respectful distance from real, specific suffering. But there is something a little unseemly about Kirby “giving the project dementia” and reveling in it across hours of pleasurable music, especially after he announced it in such a confusing way that he had to clarify that he himself had not been diagnosed with dementia. If not exploitative, it’s at least an unduly romantic view of an illness. We like to dabble in madness through music, in the abstract. But an actual disease? Why should we want to experience dementia by proxy, aesthetically, or think we even can? I watched my grandmother succumb to it for a decade before she died, and it was very little like a “beautiful daydream.” In fact, there was nothing aesthetic about it.

i have had these reservations before, not just about caretaker but about my own interests in memory loss. like the reviewer and a lot of other people, i too watched my grandpa go through alzheimers's. he's right, there's nothing romantic about it. my instinct is to think that he's taking what is an awful process to observe from the outside and morphing it into something beautiful and relatable, and that's what a lot of art aims to achieve. artists use traumatic subject material all the time, of course. the problem, if it exists, would be if Kirby was presenting his music as some sort of documentation of what the process really feels like to the person suffering from it. i haven't read the liner notes to any of his albums, but the little excerpts in the review seem to suggest that he does, at least to a degree - “Here we experience the first signs of memory loss,” Kirby writes in liner notes. “This stage is most like a beautiful daydream. The glory of old age and recollection. The last of the great days.”

here are 5 more albums to come, and by Kirby's own description, they will be quite different, more uncomfortable, and that would seem to address the reviewer's issue with this being "an unduly romantic view of an illness." i don't know. what do you all think? does this bother you? t

Very interesting post, Zach. Like you, memory and all it entails, especially its shortcomings (loss, false memories, how they are stored and wired neurologically, memory conditions) is probably my biggest "hobby", field of interest outside of what I do for a living. Out of mere fascination. It was like that already well before I got to know The Caretaker. He is undoubtedly one of my all time favorite artists, for a lot of reasons, but the shared fascination of memory obviously a big one too. Your questions and reservations deserve to be looked at more closely. I'll give it a first try.

Caretaker's focus on memory's flaws and rare conditions started out way earlier than his HAFTW records. I feel this needs to be pointed out. The massive 80 track collection 'Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia' seems to have been his starting point of making music with the idea of memory malfunction and amnesia disorders behind it, conceptually. I was, and still am, deeply struck by the sheer power of that monumental release. And sonically I'd say it approaches Alzheimer's more truthfully than anything else he's done after that. For Alzheimer's isn't a romantic thing slowly and merrily sailingthe person suffering from it into a place where reality and dreams merge into something in between those states indefinitely. It's harsh, it's full of sadness and tears, frustration and utter helplessness (loneliness) for someone who half realizes he is going down that road but is unable to take a turn. I've seen the demise in my grandfather, and it was heart shattering. TPAA sonically is in many ways unforgiving, relentless, blurry, confusing and chaotic. Which is why it struck me as 'truthful' in a way (despite from being beautiful music).

The disintegrating fading memory ballroom music, to call it that simply, are really different, but up to this last record didn't make me ask the questions you and the reviewer do, as Caretaker himself didn't conceptualize it other than perhaps the song titles he used. Now, though, he explicitly declared these last six records will basically portray the mind of someone suffering from dementia, as a way of putting this project to rest.

At the risk of criticism being way too soon here - we've not heard the other five, and I don't know if he has any personal experience with people with Alzheimer's - it is laying it on a bit thick, to announce it in the way that he did. Thin ice, conceptually imho, too. There's little if none to romanticize about Alzheimer's. Though on the other hand, seeing where he 'comes from' with his music and ideas behind it, I find it difficult to imagine he'll merrily stick to romanticizing this to be done with it.

In short: an artist should be able to examine this subject freely, I think. And his track record shows he doesn't tread lightly regarding this very subject. So I'm inclined to believe the critique is a bit too early, though I really do understand the questions raised, and will make me more focused on them as this six lp swansong progresses.

Hope that makes sense.

From that review: "Ambient music has a habit of all running together, but on 2011’s An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, James Leyland Kirby devised a series of ways to stand out"

Started in 2008 already with Persistent Repetition of Phrases tbrh