Today we’re listening to The Caretaker, a music project from English ambient musician James Leyland Kirby. Kirby began making electronic music in the ‘90s, and in 1999 set out to express the loss of memory via music. Thinking of The Shining character Jack Torrance, The Caretaker sampled ballroom music from the 1920s and ‘30s.1 His final work, Everywhere at the End of Time, degrades and fades those samples over six “stages,” mirroring the gradual onset of a memory disorder. In the time since we first shared his music back in 2019, all six installments of Everywhere have been made available on streaming services: a distant memory successfully recalled. We link to stages one and two of six below, but the opus is well worth listening to in full.
Everywhere at the End of Time (Stage 1) - The Caretaker (41m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
Everywhere at the End of Time (Stage 2) - The Caretaker (42m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
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