With his The Caretaker project, Leyland James Kirby has spent the past two decades exploring memory, loss, nostalgia and dementia through his haunting manipulations of tea-room pop. Originally conceptualised in 1999, taking direct inspiration from the haunted ballroom scene of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, The Caretaker’s music has remained deeply evocative, as eerie as it is beautiful. The result is a series of six albums released over three years between 2016-2019. With the project having come to a natural end, The Caretaker has teamed up with video artist Weirdcore to present an improvisational live audiovisual show, which we are proud to be bringing to Rewire 2020. Read The Caretaker’s interview with Daniel Melfi, and delve into his expansive six-part ‘Everywhere at the End of Time’ series below.
→ https://www.youtube.com/embed/AmcnnRv58Z4?feature=oembedDementia emerged early on as one of the primary themes and reference points for The Caretaker’s music, aesthetically interpreting the feeling of the disease through noise, crackle and sampled loops of 20’s and 30’s ballroom music. On his own relationship to the disease he says: “Memory has always been a fascination for me. My grandfather in his latter years suffered a form of dementia after experiencing a series of strokes… it’s staggering just how devastating it is and how it can work in so many different ways. Of course, I tried to approach the whole idea of using this in a creative way with great respect for the condition itself, and for those who suffer from it, and also for those who care for loved ones.”Read his interview with Electronic Beats here.The Caretaker’s prolific musical output over the past 20 years has always been accompanied by the extraordinary paintings of collaborator Ivan Seal, who has provided a fitting, instantly recognisable visual identity to accompany the project. This can be seen throughout what is perhaps the most ambitious and defining part of The Caretaker’s output- the six-stage ‘Everywhere at the End of Time’. Through six albums, The Caretaker himself passes through the six mental stages of dementia, starting with what feels like a ‘beautiful daydream’ in stage one, deteriorating to total confusion, horror and post-awareness by stage six. Stream this essential series below:
Tickets are available here: rewirefestival.nl/tickets
Stage 1, visuals by Weirdcore:
→ https://www.youtube.com/embed/HlCKYeQFw3U?start=47&feature=oembed
Stage 2, visuals by Weirdcore:
→ https://www.youtube.com/embed/Is8FSKprMPI?feature=oembed
Stage 3:
→ https://www.youtube.com/embed/DuIGJiqCb8w?feature=oembed
Stage 4:
→ https://www.youtube.com/embed/6gahbDemo-I?feature=oembed
Stage 5:
→ https://www.youtube.com/embed/5uLEZYLkGRU?feature=oembed
Stage 6:
→ https://www.youtube.com/embed/sM5hlrkaPSo?feature=oembed