Exclusively inspired by "The Shining", Stanley Kubrick's cult movie starring Jack Nicholson as the lead character, The Caretaker uses lots of dark atmospheres and drones that haunt you since 1999, when the series of "Everywhere at the end of time" started. This 6th part, released by the History always favours the winners label is the final one.
As the cultural critic Mark Fisher puts it, this music is "preoccupied with ideas about memory and nostalgia" and finds creativity in observing haunted places, places that were once drowned in people, dancing in ballrooms or just living in (now empty) places like hotels, just like the one Stephen King wrote about in his novel "The Shining". Enough said about the novel or movie, let's focus on the peculiar textures of this music.
The Caretaker's huge and impressive project deals with themes like social angst, isolation and mental health issues, illustrated sonically by dark ambient atmospheres and bits originated from long-forgotten songs that were released for gramophone playback, in a way that preserves the original sounds and their signs of degradation. You can hear lots of cracklings and rustles in this record and almost all the samples used are slightly off-beat and with reverbs and delays added.
The four songs released on this 6th part (you gotta have them all to really understand the artist's philosophy!) are longer than 21 minutes and the titles are functioning as explanations of the whole concept: "Confusion so thick you forget forgetting" (my favourite) or the closing track: "Place in the world fades away".
In A brutal bliss beyond this empty defeat, The Caretaker uses sounds originated from what appear to be engines, as well as a de-tuned trombone, eerie voices and an old piano, which add a very dark and introspective feeling of loneliness and unavoidable despair.
This project's final installment has a bonus album, Everywhere, an empty bliss, available on the artist's Bandcamp and free to download until June 2019, a work designed to offer you
James Kirby has more than 15 monikers for his projects, most of them hard to find or out of print because they are not intended to reach commercial success, as his music is not for the radio waves. You can intimately understand his aesthetic with your eyes closed and allow the music to slowly conquer you.
The complete 50-track edition of Everywhere At The End Of Time is available to download at the History Always Favours The Winners and you can also buy the physical editions featuring paintings from artist Ivan Seal via Boomkat
