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

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

all of that makes sense! and i agree. i think he's approaching the subject earnestly and has a demonstrated longstanding interest in the theme. i do think he fucked up the "rollout" of it a bit by describing it in a somewhat callous way, but i don't doubt his intentions.

i guess the end of the pitchfork review just caught my eye because as i learned more about caretaker/kirby, i wondered if others had objections to how he was approaching it, and the reviewer definitely did.

With the usual caveat about posting stuff that originates on my own site, V/Vm's Tim Hecker, Mrs Mills, Nils Frahm CD is now out...

As for the P4k review...

Here are some things that the reviewer could have gleaned had s/he read it:

He's already been working on this project for one and a half years.

It has another three years to run.

That's six albums in four and a half years in total along one theme.

Here's how he describes the first record: "an old person daydreaming"

The second record will be when they first realise something is "wrong". Therefore the first record doesn't really have anything to do with dementia other than it is the control record, if you will - this is for the listener to judge what 'normal' sounds like.

He has done a lot of research, bought books, magazines, read online articles. Not just for this album but several of the previous ones (starting with TPAA not Empty Bliss, as rightly pointed out above).

He describes the disease as "not nice", which is why the latter stages of the project will not be nice either.

He has made 200 tracks for the project so far and will have made 1000 by the end of the three years.

And none of this suggests that we're dealing with some insensitive lazy dilettante who is just trying to cause offence.

On the other hand he's only done one interview on this project in the last three years and the P4k reviewer couldn't be bothered reading it before crimping out their review and, getting nearly the whole thing arse about tit.

Sorry... had she read the interview that I did with him on this very subject I should have said. </half asleep>

s/he even. FFS.

I should say for the record: the sentence in the original press release that said, 'The Caretaker has dementia' WAS ill-judged (or sloppy perhaps). But given that a clarification was issued within an hour or two, this kind of heavy handed smack down issued by a site still fuming and red in the face simply because it couldn't be bothered fact checking a patently not-true "fact" before hitting publish, is insipidly weak sauce.

I still don't think that sentence was ill-judged, nor sloppy. I haven't seen a single fan of his music mistake it for L. Kirby actually having dementia himself. That was all media jumping to conclusions. If you've followed him for some time, there was no way to take it the wrong way imho. Didn't even cross my mind he might have been talking about something outside of his art.

Yeah, I only meant ill-judged in as far as it could have been misinterpreted by someone who knew nothing about the two decade long history of this project and was lazy and was in a massive rush.

Just a shame a person fitting that very description happens to be a P4k staffer - and shameful that they would then attack him over it rather than apologising for their own ineptitude.

NEWS FLASH: David Bowie has revealed he is a Space Invader!

CORRECTION: It appears he is not a space invader but is in fact an alligator!

More on this amazing story as we have it...

so have you guys listened to this Mrs. Mills release? :)

I like it, but am also a huge tim hecker fan

same

tim hecker's thing is amazing but also very clownable and this description on the release page just about killed me
TIM HECKER: Is a serious musician and long time V/VM fan from Montreal whose subtle use of distortions, emotions and pain makes him a perfect fit for the 4AD label, smoke machines and the colour magenta.

i think i've seen tim maybe... four times now? but james kirby only once, sadly

yeah i don't recommend listening to The Caretaker if you don't want to feel uncomfortable feelings

that was shitty, sorry.

i missed something, notably how that was shitty

unless it's "heyooo this music makes you feel bad because it's bad"

in which case lol

haha no i just felt it may have sounded insensitive to those for with a personal connection to Alzeimers, like "GO LISTEN TO YANNI THEN, YOU BABIES"

hah

OK, finally listening to the free Xmas album, and it's... unusual.

What free xmas album?!

A link was sent via email if you'd bought one of the other recent releases, I believe.
V/VM - The Christmess Stocking

Oh wow. Was away for xmas and just found it in my spam box lol

Everywhere At The End Of Time – Stage 2 is out (vinyl still available at Boomkat right now iirc). It does not disappoint, even though it's rather 'unhinged'. Could be because of the theme - the mind of an alzheimer patient going - as it jumps into unexpected waters and at times drowns in them. It feels off, and that's probably exactly what he was getting at. As a follow up to part one and part of a chain of six it will make sense, but as a standalone album it takes some time getting into it. Gorgeous hazey melodies all over though.

(this must be dj candy: was at a film festival last weekend and the dj played the first stage of the series in full between films. Even in that setting, and I doubt many people knew what it was, it is so evocative)

I do love this series so far

Third installment is out, along with a free album!

thanks for the head's up!

dang, is the second one already sold out? i slept on it

Yeah, they go really fast. The blue vinyl will probably be gone tonight.

welp, i did it. i have purchased very few LPs this year since i've been trying to save money (or at least lose it at a reduced rate). i'll have to grab a used copy of Stage 2 somewhere down the road.

Awesome *fist bump*

admittedly i was on the fence until i realized i could also pre-order kaitlyn aurelia smith's new one with a few additional clicks. that is going to be A DAY when the package arrives! :)

"I've been hard at it lately with The Caretaker work so now I afford myself a night out finally sinking the odd whisky or two down at my favourite Krakow bar, Propaganda. It's been a good while since the last time I was sat on the bar stool.

"I'll raise the whisky glass in there for us all. You know the score."

still up to the same old

Karl, watch out, you've been bitten by the boomkat affliction

fuck, i missed the blue vinyl already! i got the others, but damn it, that was too fast. They'll all be for sale on Discogs, still sealed, for crazy money by tomorrow.

boomkat is expensive as fuck. i wish there was a US version

maybe I should look into selling some of my earlier caretaker purchases, hmm

when this comes in i'll have the regular version of stage 1, no copy of stage 2, and the color LP version of stage 3. *calculates* my caretaker everywhere at the time fan score is...6.3