The Caretaker: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World Vinyl LP

If you're into spooky, ethereal music that sounds like it's from the lounge from the Tower of Terror, or if you're into The Shining (the inspiration for this music), give it a whirl. Reminds me of something I'd hear while playing BioShock.

James Leyland Kirby has established quite a rapport with his experimental and sound collage project, V/Vm. Released mostly on his own V/Vm Test Records, Kirby's numerous records range from pig noise to pure destruction of contemporary pop-songs. But his output as The Caretaker is of completely different character. Collecting "stolen memories and feelings from within the Haunted Ballroom", the music on his releases scratches at the surface of dusted records and abandoned artifacts.His critically acclaimed Persistent Repetition of Phrases (2008), on a newly spun out History Always Favours The Winners, explored ghostly echoes of melodies almost familiar, if only your consciousness can hold on to them long enough. On An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, Kirby takes his unique approach even further, by guiding discarded material into endless loops, subtle effects, and suppressed memories. Using sampled layers from his secret collection of old 78″ records, including the vinyl surface noise, The Caretaker reconstructs nostalgia, flashbacks, and déjà vu. Inspired by the 2010 study on Alzheimer's disease, that has shown patients remembering new information with the aid of music, the fifteen small "memories" fade in and out of focus, sometimes ending abruptly, sometimes appearing twice on the album!What's more amazing to me, is that after a few plays, these tunes become familiar and are at once stored in the banks of my memory. I love leaving this album playing in the background in my office! The covert art of the album features a specially commissioned painting by Ivan Seal. See if you can also hunt down a 72 track massive release, Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, digitally re-released by History Always Favours The Winners in 2009. Highly recommended!

I have 2 Caretaker LPs and granted they're pretty much the same, but I do love this guy's formula. It sounds like distant music from another era, another realm. Ghost music from a haunted hotel. Very nice.

Leyland Kirby left his hard to find monster 3 discs CD package - Sadly The Future Is No Longer What It Was a few years back. lucky if you could find a copy to consume, but.................. now we have his Careful muse - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World CD stirring all kinds of interest.it helps to be almost as old as some of these tunes. also be acquainted with the frustration of having kin and knowing friends whom have to deal with the world being a new place daily for their geriatric parents - those in the twilight of their by gone decades. there's a ghostly abandonment of hallowed dance halls that rings with the history of a black and white noir, classic film, a sinking ship going down with the captain. its all pop and click, ambient top 15 walk through hollywood and lost americana brought refreshingly back to life.images of debonaire, spats, long tails, chiffon fluff skirts, champagne flowing, and clicking high heels shuffling, echoing a past rushing up in cadence to a refurbished tomorrow. whatever it is, it isn't like anything you are likely to hear again this year or any other. you and your loved ones over a certain age deserve a spin or too. a well spring of memories might surface so briefly to remember the most fond of mental, emotional imprints - a corsage and boutonniere choking on a shy hello.

I'm not sure whether i'm qualified to review an album as ostenibly high art as an Empty Bliss Beyond This World, an informed reviewer would feel inclined to make references to Salvador Dali's opus The Persistence of Time, Harold Pinter, and of course The Shining, whilst waxing lyrical about how the concept behind this album (a musical depiction of living with alzheimers) is masterfully captured with the wistful melancholy of the spliced up ballroom jazz used here. Not to mention talking about how the vinyl crackle was an apt metaphor for the disintegration of memory that perilously ensues as the disease becomes more malignant. the ending to this imagined review would finish by declaring it something like a staggeringly deft recontextualization of 1930's ephemera, that deserves to be talked about with nothing but the upmost approbation. I personally would like to express my reverence for this wonderful music in a slighter cruder and more terse fashion if you don't mind by simply saying "I Love this album and Leyland Kirby is a genius for making it!"

This CD is obviously a recording of a live session with very poor acoustic quality and obvious ambient background noise. Buyer beware.

Great old tunes, but the quality of the music is sometimes too scratchy.But, the old tunes are very nostalgic.

This album is the soundtrack to the exploration of a large art gallery and ballroom hundreds of years after a nuclear disaster, and scientists in heavy hazmat suits are piecing together the history based on the decaying remains. It conveys a sense of solitude and echoes of years past. I can't get enough of this kind of atmosphere that Caretaker seems to have a monopoly on (Except for one Japanese artist, "tomonari nozaki").

センシュアルという言葉が思い重なる音楽でした。

Recommended by a friend I found this to be beautifully haunting with cheerful notes from 40s ballrooms - probably empty. Delightful.

古ぼけたレコードのノイズや音飛びを意図的に封入しており、ノスタルジーが誘起されます。忘れ去られた日々への敬意と哀愁をミニマルなループで表現しています。シャイニングのバーで流れているジャズの気持ちいい部分を永遠に聞ける傑作だと思います。

I love this album, one of the slightly more brighter albums from the Caretaker, both soothing and haunting at the same time, the meaning behind it rather bittersweet compared to other works in the project. However, despite the clever and interesting album cover, it is a much better and cheaper way to buy the album digital from one of the places Kirby himself puts them up for sale. So don't do what I did and spend this pricy amount here, which doesn't go direct to the artist. The only regret I have had is buying it from here.

植物状態で聞くピアノの演奏もう何もしなくていいのかなとY・Tubeで聴けますが買ってよかった