The Caretaker An Empty Bliss Beyond This World |
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 | Tracklist:
1. All You're Going to Want to Do Is Get Back There
2. Moments of Sufficient lucidity
3. The Great Hidden Sea of the Unconscious
4. Libet's Delay
5. I Feel As If I Might Be Vanishing
6. An Empty Bliss Beyond this World
7. Bedded Deep in Long Term Memory
8. A Relationship with the Sublime
9. Mental Caverns Without Sunshine
10. Pared Back to the Minimal
11. Mental Caverns without Sunshine
12. An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
13. Tiny Gradiations of Loss
14. Camaraderie at Arms Length
15. The Sublime Is Disappointingly Elusive
Release Date: 06/21/2011 | |
| | other reviews | Nick Butler STAFF (3.5)
Dixieland jazz meets inner-city depression in one of the year's most beguiling albums.... |
On 27 Lists
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| Summary: The haunting echo of forgotten ballrooms, as revealed through the surface noises of antique phonographs and lost realities. |
7 of 8 thought this review was well written
When I first heard about James Leyland Kirby's ambient project The Caretaker, it was one of the most intriguing reads I'd ever had. I had read that his music was heavily inspired by the ballroom scene in The Shining, one of my personal favorites. That particular sequence is striking. The way Kubrick framed those shots, slowly panning through the ballroom; it was like a moment through haunted history. How utterly atmospheric that scene is. It still manages to make me grin like Alex DeLarge whenever I think about it. Then, to hear about an artist who makes music that develops on that very thought? That just completely blew me away.
The Caretaker's latest took me back to that scene, but also somewhere else altogether. There is a constant theme at play, beyond taking old ballroom 78s and giving them a ghostly accent, these fifteen tracks represent lost musical memories. Described as distant memories of Alzheimer's patients who can recall musical recordings longer than they can other memories, it's a conception that brings a passionate heaviness to the music. These songs aren't just dark spaces of American history, but the fading memories of the people of that history.
Kirby paints that concept beautifully through the cracked frame of his cobweb stricken canvas. Songs end abruptly due to the sweeping of memory from consciousness, something an Alzheimer's patient would likely experience. Whether these memories appear as dark piano halls, forgotten ballrooms, or distant concerts, the result is stunning. To bring concept furthermore, individual songs are broken up through the track listing to give a sense of fractured logic, proving that a memory can appear at any time.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World completely redefines what "Ambient" music can be and how far it can go. You can hear vinyl crack like rain, you can hear the deep resonance of hollowed pianos, and you can hear real distance within the music. Sounds that are so far away, yet so close. When horns appear, it's some of the most sublime and entrancing sounds I've ever heard, particularly under the delayed keys of 'Libet's Delay' and the closing track. When I listen to a song like 'A relationship with the sublime', I can stare at a wall and make it feel like it's the most important part of my day. It's entrancing, emotional, and timeless music that anyone with two ears and an affection for the past can get lost into.
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| Recent reviews by this author | | | |
Album Rating: 4.5
Some of my favorites from the album
The Sublime Is Disappointingly Elusive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfBs0p_RRaE
A Relationship With Sublime: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoQrzjkMRm4&feature=related
Libet's Delay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vzw0E7qMJs
You can stream the full album at bandcamp
http://thecaretaker.bandcamp.com/album/an-empty-bliss-beyond-this-world
Digging: Laurel Halo - Quarantine Digging: Laurel Halo - Quarantine | | | Album Rating: 3
A Stairway to the Stars is pretty good. I'll have to give this a try, sounds interesting
Digging: John Talabot - Fin Digging: John Talabot - Fin | | |
This sounds pretty awesome, I'll check it out.
Good review, pos.
Digging: johnny_ripper - Still Images & Other Dreams Digging: johnny_ripper - Still Images & Other Dreams
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Sounds pretty boring, but I'll check it out soon.
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lol saw this, it reminded me of scary movie
Digging: Ne Obliviscaris - Portal of I Digging: Ne Obliviscaris - Portal of I
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Quite like the review, and the album is indeed a pretty cool concept. Just wish you'd get rid of this sentence in your conclusion "An Empty Bliss Beyond This World completely redefines what "Ambient" music can be and how far it can go."
I'm not knocking on the song, but saying it redefines ambient music is overstating its significance and getting carried away a bit there.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
I'm not talking about the song "An Empty Bliss Beyond This World", I'm talking about the album as a whole. I believe it that statement isn't overstating anything.
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Meh, I'm happy to make that statement whether you were referring to the song or the album as a whole. I mean how exactly does this redefine ambient?
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
To me it redefines ambient style music because of how deep the music is. It's not just a matter of taking synthesizers and droning them out to create a sense of emotion; this album takes historic music from the source (early Gramophone records) and manipulates them to create a cohesion and depth that breathes new life out of old and forgotten documents. This style reminds me a lot of William Basinski's work, where you’re taking physical objects like records or tape decks to create a specific sound. I'm not talking about just sampling, but using the instrument's physical condition to create atmosphere.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Got an 8.2 on pitchfork, apparently it's hip now.
| | | Album Rating: 3
Strip away the high concept which you only learn about outside the music (a concept which the overfawning music press who like to fancy themselves intellectual for an intellectual readership will be sure to tell you about) and the cool track titles. You're left with something completely unremarkable. It's recycled tunes hardly altered but given a new context by an admittedly interesting but still distrating backstory.
The Caretaker is essentially trying to sell you a pig dressed in fine linen.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
If the "pig" in that dress is suppose to be the vintage ballroom sound, your completely off. Whether or not you believe these sounds are simply overt samples with a little contextualizing isn't relevant to me, but there's no denying the beauty in alot of these tracks.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
i have no idea how much work kirby himself actually did on these vinyl samples, but this is really really cool and evocative. definitely "high-concept" in the vein of, say, basinski's disintegration loops (which i find insufferable), but nonetheless a great listening experience
| | | Album Rating: 4
agree with robertsona
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
libet's delay is soooo cool
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Libet's Delay is lovely, reminds me unquestionably of the ballroom scene from The Shining
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
"a relationship with the sublime" is like barely a 10 second loops but it just kills me
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Yeah I got that vibe too. The whole album would make a suiting Lynch score as a matter of fact.
| | | Album Rating: 4
Want to get into this band.
Digging: Botanist - I: The Suicide Tree / II: A Rose From the Dead Digging: Botanist - I: The Suicide Tree / II: A Rose From the Dead | | | Album Rating: 4.5
"Want to get into this band."
This is a great album to start
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