The Caretaker

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Will you use all of the previous Caretaker releases as source material?

So to start with, everything is new. The first one is really like an old person daydreaming. When I was getting it mastered I knew I wanted it to be really rich, really big, really consistent sounding all the way through. The interesting thing is the switch between the first and second album. The second one is a massive difference between the moods.

The second one is the point where you realise that something is wrong. You probably try and remember more than you usually would at this stage. So on the second LP there are actually full tracks but things are missing, sections have been stripped away. From the third record we get almost to An Empty Bliss stage. The reasoning behind me doing this project however is for me to take it forward further still. How do you make complete confusion a good listen? And I need that challenge. People who buy the first album digitally from Bandcamp or Boomkat will automatically get all six releases, as they come out over the three year period.

There will also be physical copies of all of them - a series of vinyl LPs and a couple of three CD sets released at the halfway mark and the endpoint. Kirby says that the first three in the series should contain interchangeable tracks, that they could be left on shuffle as a set but after the halfway point the degradation will become much more severe.

He says he has completed the first two albums, is working on the third and has a clear idea of what will happen in the whole series: And then I have to find specific points in those tracks which are interesting and edit them down. The software exists for you to do this now. And they will get this particular type of sound at one stage. But by buying it they will be forced into different areas [of listening].

So the later stages of the project are not going to be that nice.

The Caretaker (musician)

I think that element will be in play. The possibilities are huge. You can compare the same section looped from each song. For the second album I managed to find a different version of the same song but somehow the guys playing it sound… low. The context is important: It needed the context of the whole series to make sense.

It does feel as if things are coming to a natural head regardless. He has made Caretaker tracks over the last 18 months and, by his estimation, will have made over one thousand for Everywhere by the end of the project. By August this year, he had already made more Caretaker tracks than he had in the other 16 years of the project combined.

There are possibly a couple of ways to do something else but it would be more on an experimental scale. The project has successfully traversed a technological divide since inception. He says the sophistication of the tracks in is down to a much deeper understanding of his process, a wider array of creative techniques, much more powerful hardware and better access to source material. He is of the opinion that if people think what he does is easy, they are free to try it themselves.

He warns me that it may take some time. His artist girlfriend Anna points out of the window mock disconsolately. He spreads his arms wide as if to embrace the chill: Kirby was born in Stockport in the mids. Kirby then started hearing a wide selection of electronic dance music at a weekly under 18s disco in Manchester as well as buying imports from record shops in town.

In , his final year at secondary school, a conversation about music with fellow pupil Andy Macgregor, led to a deepening interest in rave and darker electronic sounds. By the time the pair left school, they were throwing teenage parties themselves, DJing at Monroes, a club in Stockport as well as making music together the period would go on to inspire The Death Of Rave A Partial Flashback. Despite his tastes and the proximity, Kirby always felt apart from the scene in Manchester though: I went to clubs that were slightly darker, like Konspiracy where there was a bit more of an edge.

I was into the music, not the scene. How in one year alone he released 30 records under that name, recording, pressing up and distributing them all on his own. But even with such a prolific work rate the idea of being able to keep his head above water making such abrasive art with no other source of income became untenable - especially after his work started attracting attention from copyright lawyers - so he moved to Berlin in He is now ambivalent about his six year stay in Germany: I was doing work in between but I knew I had to get out of there so I could do better work and more of it.

The Caretaker - Wikipedia

The first thing I got was an Amiga [computer] when I was 16 or That really opened my eyes, because you could play a sample on it and see it on the screen. It was like a mountain range. The switch to PC was the next one. So many mistakes are made while building a studio. I remember those days fondly. I think you still need the ideas, and the drive to come up with things. I should probably check it out. Whenever I go back, I spend six or seven solid days just recording. The last time, I probably recorded two or three hundred records. I spent a lot of time digging stuff out.

A lot of the Caretaker is on YouTube now as well. All of the records were really expensive, but then I came across this whole section of ballroom stuff. And everything in it was like 50 cents. The girl was really happy to see me come to the counter with this big pile of records that cost about 10 dollars or so. The whole Empty Bliss record came from that. And a lot of people had went to wars and never come back so there was a lot of uncertainty.

The weight of these tracks is incredible sometimes.

Leyland Kirby on The Caretaker’s New Project: Six Albums Exploring Dementia

They say he would have been bigger than Bing Crosby, that he had a better voice. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email. Latest Top Stories Bandcamp Updates. Photo by Matt Wilkinson. Do you have a rough sketch of how the songs are going to deteriorate over time? Are you trying to limit yourself, technology wise? Have you built up tons of sample banks over the years? Is the Caretaker stuff purely sample-based? What was your first exposure to ballroom music? Are you ever worried about losing your own memory? So exploring these themes over the years is more of a fascination than a fear?

Contains tracks

But you can also reach people directly now more than ever before. E5 - To the minimal great hidden E6 - Sublime beyond loss E7 - Bewildered in other eyes E8 - Long term dusk glimpses F1 - Gradations of arms length F2 - Drifting time misplaced F3 - Internal bewildered World F4 - Burning despair does ache F5 - Aching cavern without lucidity F6 - An empty bliss beyond this World F7 - Libet delay F8 - Mournful cameraderie G1 - Stage 4 Post Awareness Confusions H1 - Stage 4 Post Awareness Confusions I1 - Stage 4 Temporary Bliss State J1 - Stage 4 Post Awareness Confusions K1 - Stage 5 Advanced plaque entanglements L1 - Stage 5 Advanced plaque entanglements M1 - Stage 5 Synapse retrogenesis N1 - Stage 5 Sudden time regression into isolation Featuring the sounds from the journey The Caretaker as artist will make after being artistically diagnosed as having early onset dementia.

Each stage will reveal new points of progression, loss and disintegration. Progressively falling further and further towards the abyss of complete memory loss and nothingness. Viewing dementia as a series of stages can be a useful way to understand the illness, but it is important to realise that this only provides a rough guide to the progress of the condition. Drawing on a recorded history of 20 years of recollected memories this is one final journey and study into recreating the progression of dementia through sound.

This stage is most like a beautiful daydream. The glory of old age and recollection. The last of the great days. More effort is made to remember so memories can be more long form with a little more deterioration in quality. The overall personal mood is generally lower than the first stage and at a point before confusion starts setting in. Finest moments have been remembered, the musical flow in places is more confused and tangled.

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