The Caretaker
Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 4


3.0
good

Review

by Winesburgohio STAFF
April 12th, 2018 | 23 replies


Release Date: 2018 | Tracklist

Review Summary: Call it the Leyland Kirby paradox: the more obviously unsettling one renders their music, the less haunting and affecting it is

Call it the Leyland Kirby paradox: the more obviously unsettling one renders their music, the less haunting and affecting it is. Stage 4 of Kirby's Everywhere at the End of Time series, documenting the process of dementia as it worsens, is by far the most tonally bleak of the installments, and abruptly so. Though there were hints of pretty melodies getting distorted, winks of dismal ambient fog, in the forerunners, 4 takes it to a new level of emotional desolation. Listening to this album is plunging into a hell borne not of the uncanny but of inevitable human decay, and I have no doubt Kirby has done his research and that this terrifying muddle of crackle, barely restrained noise and glisters of Dixieland listened to long ago, presumably when the days were sunnier, accurately portrays this stage of Alzheimers (as the song titles make clear, "Post Awareness Confusions", with a "Temporary Bliss State" thrown in just to disconcert the listener even more). Temporary Bliss State, judiciously placed in the middle, emphasises the ephemerality of anything that could be construed as happiness or lucidity. The only experience I can compare it to is saying goodbye to someone for what you know to be the last time; any kind of happiness then, if not wholly ersatz, is at least leavened by knowledge of the inevitable. Kirby is throwing everything at you here, playing up the dramatic irony of your awareness of the protagonists plight while he, if he once knew it, can no longer remember it.

It doesn't work.

That isn't to say I don't like the music -- mentioning glitch with elements of British Big Band and noisy, crackly overtones generates a Pavlovian response of salivation in your correspondent -- but which is to say it doesn't work conceptually. The reason for this is threefold:

1) why this doesn't work for me is why I didn't cry in The Notebook (another cultural artefact with a cloying, histrionic take on dementia): one can feel the creator beyond the music, pulling the strings, desperate to elicit a desired reaction. I feel that it's the task of any artist to meet the audience halfway and, if they want to beguile, make it clever and nuanced. The presence of Kirby on this album is overbearing; one gets the feeling if he could reach from beyond the screen and prick you with a pin to really get the tears flowing, he would.

2) I adore two of Kirby's previous records under his Caretaker moniker -- An Empty Bliss, obviously, but also the third installment of this series, but I find them excruciatingly difficult to listen to in full, more so than most extreme music, because it's hard to locate where they disorient and haunt. The slow, gradual loss of lucidity and identity, a kind of piecemeal decay that is so imperceptible one wouldn't be able to remember where they began while retaining core aspects of self... that, for me, is terrifying, and much more terrifying than listening to a landscape of post-apocalyptic drones and cheesy radio interjections. An Empty Bliss asks me how i got here, how have i changed, how will i change, where did I go wrong. I'm not sure I can answer. This album asks me to consider what utter confusion looks like and then hammers the answer home to me with the subtlety of toddler flinging food at their parents. It's not much fun, apparently. While I don't disagree, I'm not exactly challenged to come to that answer.

3) The Caretaker's best work has always uncannily integrated loss of cultural memory into personal memory. Dixieland and British Big Band -- the two genres he loves to use as source material - used to play before scores of dancing, laughing listeners in lush, opulent ballrooms. These ballrooms now stand empty, collecting dust. The dances exist only in a lucky few's memories, and even then tucked away in recesses, nooks and crannies. How previously ubiquitous genres have fallen into disrepair, how cultural movements have been allowed to fade out of the only thing that matters -- memory -- is a preoccupation of his and mine, and it is a haunting one because it behooves the question: what else have we lost? By the nature of the question we can't know, and this integration transforms his work from "haunting" into "indelible".

Everywhere at the End of Time 4 is neither. There are plenty of fine albums about decay - Mark Templeton's Heart trilogy, The Disintegration Loops, Meadowlark, and, weirdly, Burial's self-titled (those two artists share another commonality; where Kirby dwells in forgotten ballrooms and salons, Burial lives in the cultural memory of 90s rave and dub culture: both of them return to the present to find them empty, devoid of anything corporeal of only spectres of a past we'll never revive) come to mind -- and all of them do it by being subtle, clever and cohesive. In trying to be disjointed, difficult and miserable, Kirby has succeeded. In trying to be poignant or affecting, he has failed: the irony, that I know this because I can listen to it without verging on panic, is yet another quirk of dealing with such a difficult topic through art. While the intentions are laudable, the execution is as confused as the subject matter.



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user ratings (57)
3.8
excellent

Comments:Add a Comment 
Winesburgohio
Staff Reviewer
April 12th 2018


4180 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

music in context - 2.5

music in and of itself - 3.5

my ingenious iq and ideas - 5

ramon.
April 12th 2018


4204 Comments


leave a little talent for the rest of us there buddy
"why this doesn't work for me is why I didn't cry in The Notebook (another cultural artefact with a cloying, histrionic take on dementia): one can feel the creator beyond the music, pulling the strings, desperate to elicit a desired reaction"
lawwwd

Rowan5215
Emeritus
April 12th 2018


48004 Comments


cool and informative review, that parentheses part in the last para might be a little too long? could've been a sentence on its own terms imo

I've only heard Empty Bliss and it was absolutely righteous and made me want to make short films

robertsona
Staff Reviewer
April 12th 2018


28200 Comments


Really nice review

Gyromania
April 12th 2018


37552 Comments


great review, but i personally love this. was in the process of doing a little writeup for this. might post it yet, since our ratings are so different.

what do you think of this, robertsona?

Gyromania
April 12th 2018


37552 Comments


"I've only heard Empty Bliss and it was absolutely righteous and made me want to make short films"

yes! empty bliss is one of my favourite albums

Winesburgohio
Staff Reviewer
April 12th 2018


4180 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

thanks fellas i'll make some touch-ups



gyro i'd like to see your review! i really like a format of two differing opinions on an album at the best of times get 'er up boiiii

Gyromania
April 12th 2018


37552 Comments


i'm lowkey upset that you made a comparison to burial, because i did the exact same thing in the review i'm writing :P altho my mention of him is for different reasons - basically stating that track 4 is something i could very much see burial making if he delved more into ambient, but also touching on the aesthetic similarities you mentioned. i can already tell you my review won't be this articulate or thought-provoking, it's been an age since i posted a review. find it much easier to write about obscure, conceptual music like this than your ordinary rap record tho, so we'll see.

luci
April 12th 2018


12844 Comments


very good review! really like this though

JJKeys
April 13th 2018


1344 Comments

Album Rating: 4.0

Excellent review - whilst I don't agree to the extent of this stage's failings in its nuance, I appreciate how one could see that.

It's more so the stark transition between Stage 3 and Stage 4 that is its weakness, I find; where Stage 1 through 3 slid into a subtle disjointedness, there's no gradual epiphany of the awareness brought in Stage 4.

As its own isolated record, Stage 4 is brilliant, but in the context of the entire project, I can see this transition (or lack thereof) being its Achilles' Heel. Still - definitely one of the most interesting and ambitious concept projects I've seen recently, looking forward to hearing and despairing at the rest.

StallionMang
April 13th 2018


9003 Comments


had to shut it off after 9 minutes. this is gonna fuck my world

sovietstrudelmeister
April 13th 2018


6 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

kinda forgot about this chap for a while. it's interesting stuff, but it really does feel kinda like it's trying too hard after a while. still alright, though

Asura14
April 13th 2018


574 Comments

Album Rating: 2.5

Didn't connect to this at all, might be my own fault for wanting more Empty bliss when I knew I wasn't going to get anything like it.



Got reminded of under the skin for some reason, but in all the bad ways

Sniff
April 13th 2018


8204 Comments

Album Rating: 3.5

Good rating of self

Dedes
Contributing Reviewer
April 13th 2018


10620 Comments


Review owns, sniffs rating owns

EphemeralEternity
April 13th 2018


4603 Comments


review is pretty good but again I feel you're somewhat hamstrung by your limited vocabulary. Pick up a thesaurus and keep at it tho man!

Conmaniac
April 13th 2018


27704 Comments


ah so this isnt as good as empty...oh well. that record conceptually is just too amazing / fascinating that I bet it's incredibly difficult for him to replicate or move on from it. good rev

luci
April 13th 2018


12844 Comments


^hear it before judging! this is currently rated higher than an empty bliss on rym, wines is a minor dissenter

SimpleM
April 13th 2018


122 Comments

Album Rating: 3.5

very dark and disturbing ambient record. the concept is great good review

Winesburgohio
Staff Reviewer
April 14th 2018


4180 Comments

Album Rating: 3.0

JJkeys perfectly encapsulating my thoughts, feelings and life goddamnit



ta everyone and even though i'm not massively fond of it it's definitely worth a listen! i'd be intrigued what someone thinks of it if they come in blind to the concept...



@ephemeral my hamstrings are fine thank you



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