The Caretaker

[WIP]

About

The Caretaker is a musical alias created by British musician and producer James Leyland Kirby in 1999. As the Caretaker, he became known for releases that explored themes of memory loss and nostalgia mainly through sampled jazz and ballroom recordings from the first half of the 20th century. Two albums released that garnered significant attention were 2011's An empty bliss beyond this World, and the "final" project under the Caretaker name, Everywhere at the end of time, a 6-part series of albums spanning 3 years exploring the subject of dementia from start to finish.

History

James Leyland Kirby, also known under the alias V/Vm, started the Caretaker project in 1999 with the release of its first album Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom on September 1st of that year. Inspired by the ballroom scene from Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining, the album utilized distorted and manipulated samples of old early 20th century vinyl records of jazz and ballroom music.

An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

On June 1st, 2011, Kirby released the album An empty bliss beyond this World

Everywhere at the End of Time

On September 22nd, 2016, Kirby released the first installment of a 6-part series of albums called Everywhere at the end of time. which would mark the end of the Caretaker alias. The series was described as the music the character of The Caretaker would make as he goes through the stages of early onset dementia from start to finish after being diagnosed with the illness. The project would see a release twice a year for the next three years, before finally ending on March 19th, 2019. In an interview with The Quietus, he stated his reasoning for ending the alias:

“I think I’m coming to the end of The Caretaker. I just can’t see where I can take it after this. My final idea has been to give the whole project dementia. Originally I was going to make one recording and take it down into the abyss over a period of three years. So the idea would have been to do one recording and degrade it, to process it down so you would get a continuation from the start to the end point. But then I thought, “Wouldn’t it be better to give the whole project dementia?” That then forces me to think, “Well, what do I remember from the project myself?” Because it’s nearly 20 years since I started making the first record. And then I developed this idea of doing six releases each with a gap of six months between each one to give a sense of time passing.”

A YouTube upload of the entire series submitted by user vvmtest on March 2019(shown below), which to date has over 3.5 million views.

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Ifunny – stfu I'm listening