Just a note, I love the stage 6 cover. I think the discussion about it a while back missed the point. Its the back of a canvas, so it's like the memories are still there, but they can't be reached. It's horrifying

Is it the back of a canvas? I just thought it was a blank canvas, portraying a tabula rasa (blank slate) which is very in keeping with its themes, but your take is just as terrifying. I mentioned that it does fit contextually but visually it doesn't grab me like the other covers do

I’d say that blue tape makes it look like the back of a canvas

do people normally put blue tape on the back of their canvases? i have no idea, i'm not a painter lol. looked kind of ratty and worn to me, and the two hinge looking things on the right made me think it was a door or something at first glance

I don’t know why I say that but yeah I feel like blue tape is a classic back-of-canvas thing. lol I’ll look it up see what I find

let us know what you find! btw you gonna listen to this? i know you rly dug empty bliss, i think you'd prob get something out of this

I’ll kick my own ass if I don’t Listen to this eventually, but it might take a while. Still trying to find that hilarious video of me talking about the caretaker’s discog (he had just released Patience). Apparently blue tape is CALLED “painters tape” albeit I think that’s usually more like painting a house or st but yah

You dont have to put blue tape on the back of your canvas. You also dont have to use a cabinet door as a canvas.

i do interior painting and painter's tape, at least in my experience, has always been green, so that's interesting. maybe the blue tape is for a different application. hmmm, maybe kirby wanted people to go mad trying to decide on what exactly that picture is haha.

post a link to that vid if you find it!

blue is just a different tack strength, it's not as sticky as green.

it must be fking awful then because green tape isn't very sticky and sometimes falls off after i apply it

U want it for delicate stuff where u cant leave behind residue. I used to use it for screen printing cuz it was easy to peel off

I just listened to this in one go. Would it really be that much less effective if it was cut to, say, two hours?

not necessarily. there's a condensed version of this to a mere 6 minutes i posted earlier that a lot of people listened to and decided it's not for them, just from the sheer length of the full project. i do think that it's staged very well though, with each album getting darker as it goes. anyway, what are your thoughts? i haven't spoken to a lot of people who actually sat down to listen to the entire album front to back. even i've only done this once, with all my other listens being fragmented

Thought I set myself up for the listen really well, by starting in broad daylight and finishing in pitch black darkness outside. However, to be honest, I wasn't able to focus for the whole duration and was doing some other stuff while listening. The first three stages are cool, although I'm not really sure how much of that was actually Caretaker's work (especially in the first two). The third stage was great - you can really feel the uneasiness and relapses kicking in. I enjoyed the much needed sonic departure in stage four and thought it expressed the deterioration of consciousness well, but it started to really blend together about midway through. The first track of stage five is great and freaky as shit; I suppose the glitchiness interwoven with almost beautiful moments of calm are meant to express some final conscious moments. From then on... it lost me. The endless droning of most of stage 5 and the entirety of stage 6 (apart from the final few minutes) didn't do much for me. There were some pretty soundscapes, but just way way too long for its own good. Stage 3, parts of Stage 4 and the first track of Stage 5 were the highlights. Glad I gave it a shot, but don't think I'll relisten any time soon.

I'm intrigued

Album Rating: 5.0

watching I'm Thinking of Ending Things, it legit feels like the movie adaptation of this record

I had a similar listening experience my first time, Crawl. It definitely blends in a lot and the latter half of 5 and entirety of 6 is a bit hard to sit through - definitely recommend having it on in the background as you do other things

Haha I'm thinking of ending things is a great movie to relate this album to. Never even thought of that.

There's a cool Spotify list that has all of the songs Caretaker took samples from to make this. It's what pops up in a search due to the album not being on Spotify.

I chuckled at the idea of buying this on vinyl, because there's already artificial vinyl crackle in the music.