Опекун: Исследование памяти и ностальгии в эмбиент-музыке

English musician of ambience

The Caretaker was a long running project by English ambient musician, James Leyland Kirby (born 9 May 1974). His work as the Caretaker is characterized as exploring memory and its gradual deterioration, nostalgia, and melancholia. The project was inspired by the haunted ballroom scene in the 1980 film The Shining. His first several releases comprised treated and manipulated samples of 1930s ballroom pop recordings. and BBC Music.

Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia was released in 2005 as a series of 72 free MP3 downloads. The release found much critical acclaim. Reynolds identifies it as a shift in the sound, "disorienting in its scale and abstraction", with his period 2005 2008 "exploring similar zones of queasy amorphousness". Jon Fletcher describes the release as "the labyrinthian set is a k hole for the mind. Vague clouds of noise, barely flickering signals of life, only the starkest traces of past romanticism (no matter how poignant) nothing to cling onto." Persistent Repetition of Phrases combines an overt interest in amnesia and memory distortion, with a more melodic piano centered atmosphere, with fewer recognizable samples than the Haunted Ballroom period: "After a few minutes you realize that something is stuck Each song is tightly looped, a single event, chasing its resignation. No development, no narrative, no story. Not every locked groove is entirely hopeless. Rosy retrospection fixates on an event with a sense of less bereft nostalgia the memory trap seemingly resting on a happy moment.". At the time, this album was seen as his masterpiece, with Kirby describing himself as "surprised" by the level of reception, as it was created in a "bleak" and difficult period of his life.

After 2008, the Caretaker's website announced that "work has begun on a new release for early 2010 which will shift focus completely towards the brain and brain function, recall and error". During this time, Kirby released Sadly, the Future Is No Longer What It Was under his own name, which was described by Pitchfork as "music of stasis that doesn't announce itself as much as it seeps." Kirby's focus at this time was on another album, and did not plan out making another Caretaker record of this kind the album was made because of "pure chance in action at all times.". It features a single track in its 48 minute runtime, with previously unreleased music by the Caretaker. Kirby's initial intention would be to give Take Care for people attending at his performance at the Barbican Hall in London. However, its high demand caused him to share it on the internet. Released in a CD, it included a message stating its proceeds would be donated to the mental health charity Mind. Kirby's last work as the Caretaker, released alongside 2019's Stage 6, is Everywhere, an Empty Bliss, a collection of unreleased archival works.

The Caretaker describes himself as "fascinated by memory and its recall", as well as suggesting the project is "a kind of audio black comedy". As well as The Shining, The Caretaker names Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven as an influence, which also appropriates music of the era in a new way with a "sadness in the lyrics to keep telling the story", as well as Carnival of Souls (1962) Fisher notes that the project is "rooted in Britishness", with the Caretaker generally choosing to focus on only British source material. Fletcher suggests "Roxy Music's early weirdness" Theorist Mark Fisher had a symbiotic relationship with the Caretaker, contributing the liner notes to Theoretically Pure Antiretrograde Amnesia as well as putting his work in critical context, often taking the Caretaker as a jumping off point for his political ideas. Following Fisher's death, the Caretaker released Take Care, It's a Desert Out There as a memorial album, after one of the writer's quotes, with proceeds going to the mental health charity Mind.