weird music

'Watching Dead Empires in Decay’, an album recorded under another of Kirby’s pseudonyms ‘The Stranger’ and released on Modern Love, a label that has been close to Kirby through these last eventful 15 years. It’s a dream album for the label: perhaps the most ambitious of Kirby’s career so far. It’s complex, singular, enigmatic, percussive, dark, and you just can’t work out how it was constructed.

Gone are the sampled 78’s of The Caretaker, but it also doesn't exactly sound electronic - you just can’t quite fathom how any of it was put together: Field Recordings? Found Sounds? Sheets of metal scraped and hammered? Drum machines re-wired? It’s stark and unsettling, haunted, even troubling - but often just beautiful.

The Stranger - So Pale It Shone In The Night

Noah - Flexion

Taken from The Caretaker album 'Persistent repetition of phrases'

THE CARETAKER - false memory syndrome

Remnants

Remnants. I Kristine. I Vozvrashchenie. / These Moments. I These Thoughts / Wenn Man Thränen Schreiben Könnte (Kleist)

The Caretaker conjures a quieter, more introspective spirit, lost in his own mind amidst a low-lit labyrinth of ever-decaying and antediluvian shellac phrases. Sourced from a mysterious collection of 78s, these vague snippets of archaic sonics reflect the ability of Alzheimers patients to recall the songs of their past, and with them recollections of places, people, moods and sensations.

01 - All you are going to want to do is get back there

02 - Moments of sufficient lucidity

03 - The great hidden sea of the unconscious

04 - Libet's delay

05 - I feel as if I might be vanishing

06 - An empty bliss beyond this World

07 - Bedded deep in longterm memory

08 - A relationship with the sublime

09 - Mental caverns without Sunshine

10 - Pared back to the minimal

11 - Mental caverns without Sunshine

12 - An empty bliss beyond this World

13 - Tiny gradiations of loss

14 - Camaraderie at arms length

15 - The sublime is disappointingly elusive

*FULL PREVIEW*. Stray Theories' original was epic enough, but now this cinematic piece has been extended into a 14-minute journey by Herbstlaub, with added atmospheric vocals, subtle beats and details you'll notice but never fully identify.

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri.

Available as part of the Uncharted Places compilation
http://astrangelyisolatedplace.bandcamp.com/album/uncharted-places

Uncharted Places: Stray Theories - Frozen Skies (Herbstlaub Remix)

weird music

astralpanther