James Leyland Kirby Gives “The Caretaker” Alias Dementia, Releases First of Final 6 Albums

Electronic artist James Leyland Kirby releases music under many aliases, including V/Vm, the Stranger, and his own name. As the Caretaker, he makes experimental soundscapes out of manipulated samples from bygone eras, “bringing together ideas about archives, appropriation, memory, and the accretion and disappearance of cultural objects,” as Pitchfork Executive Editor Mark Richardson once put it. His breakthrough 2011 album An Empty Bliss Beyond This World was inspired by a study of Alzheimer’s patients and music. Today, Kirby released the first installment of Everywhere at the end of time, a six-part series which will be released twice a year over the next three years, and which will mark the end of the Caretaker project.

Everywhere at the end of time by The CaretakerIn the text accompanying the installment’s release on Bandcamp, and in a press release, Kirby wrote:

‘Everywhere at the end of time’ is a new and finite series exploring dementia, its advance and its totality.

Featuring the sounds from the journey The Caretaker will make after being diagnosed as having early onset dementia.

Each stage will reveal new points of progression, loss and disintegration. Progressively falling further and further towards the abyss of complete memory loss and nothingness.

Viewing dementia as a series of stages can be a useful way to understand the illness, but it is important to realise that this only provides a rough guide to the progress of the condition.

Drawing on a recorded history of 20 years of recollected memories this is one final journey and study into recreating the progression of dementia through sound.

However, Kirby himself has not been diagnosed with dementia, he clarified in an email to Pitchfork. “The Caretaker” has dementia, not him. “I have given the project dementia,” he wrote. “It’s a fitting epitaph for a finite series of works which has always dealt with memory. There shouldn’t be any confusion and it’s not intentional if there is any.” In a new interview with The Quietus, he explained more about the project.

Read James Leyland Kirby’s full interview about his new Caretaker project here. Listen to the first stage of Everywhere at the end of time below. Scroll down for the tracklist, cover art, and a video by Weirdcore to accompany this stage.

Everywhere at the end of time:

01 It’s just a burning memory
02 We don’t have many days
03 Late afternoon drifting
04 Childishly fresh eyes
05 Slightly bewildered
06 Things that are beautiful and transient
07 All that follows is true
08 An autumnal equinox
09 Quiet internal rebellions
10 The loves of my entire life
11 Into each others eyes
12 My heart will stop with joy

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