James Leyland Kirby is probably better known for his other project called V/vm. Since there has been an article in Wire magazine about that, I decided we should talk about The Caretaker. So here is our interview. I hope you will enjoy.
Interview:
Thanks a lot for taking your time to talk about your project called The Caretaker. What are some of the influences that had an impact on you at the beginning of The Caretaker?
Initially it was all about ghosts and memories, taking cues from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ also Dennis Potter’s ‘Pennies from Heaven’ and the film ‘Carnival of Souls’. The music itself too from the 1930’s has its own sadness and melancholic senses of loss as it was recorded inbetween the Wars when so many souls were lost.
How did you got the idea to paste so many different things together and where do you get these tunes? Are you a collector? I used to collect more, I was lucky as there was a shop where I am from which specialised in old 78rpm records called the ‘78 Record Exchange’. Two old guys used to run that place and I was able to get so much incredible music from there before sadly it closed down some years back.
The sound has developed from creating old memories and feelings into looking at specific conditions of memory loss and dysfunction. There was a big leap forward with this when i released ‘Theoretically pure anterograde amnesia’ as I had to make a release which could not be remembered but still had points of reference. The newer works have dealt with conditions where people are stuck in their own loops of thought. One of the aims was to make something which can appear very beautiful on the surface but when you listen deeply can also be very frightening and leave you feeling strange.
V/Vm was probably one of the most extreme projects of its time. It covered so much and maybe this was its problem as it became too big to work out and connect with. It abused copyright and other musicians too in a very powerful way.
The mad thing was I gave so much music away and did some really crazy projects where so much music was created. Nowadays nothing is online from this project at all except some you-tube videos as I had full control over all of it.
There was great article I did for the Wire about this which you check at http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/8136/
What can you tell me about your record label? How did it started and what are some future plans for the label? Any upcoming releases?
I have been running a label since 1996 but decided to stop working on V/Vm Test and set up a new label ‘History Always Favours The Winners’ to release what I want to release again with perhaps a more focused ethic in the way releases look and are presented to people. It’s a lot more personal now, especially the works under my own name which feature no samples at all. There I hit for the more emotional feelings and connections. Right now I am very excited about the possibilities for future work but there is no plan at all. Each day I get up and work on something and hope overtime something stands out and work will flow in that direction.
A lot of people really connected with this record and it really did get out there in a very organic way and keeps reaching out in unexpected ways. It’s amazing really it was made. I had no plans to do it but found myself in New York with the Demdike Stare guys Miles and Sean. They took me record shopping when I had a terrible hangover in Brooklyn and I went into this shop and found all of these records which were very cheap, i think 50 cents each. Everything else in the shop was expensive. So i bought them and when I got back to Berlin I had no plans to do anything with them. Then I was staying at this great flat but the girl whose flat it was didn’t like my lifestyle at the time of bringing an endless stream of girls back there (Her neighbours must have been spying as she was in China) so she told me I had to leave within a month. She had a turntable so I thought before I go I will record all these vinyls and luckily I had a sound recorder from a random road trip I did with two girls I found in Spain when the volcano erupted in Iceland. I recorded the vinyls using that too and there was something special in all of them. When I got to the flat where I am now I got to work straight away and you now hear the finished result. Really without all of those factors the release would not have happened at all.
We can then say it was a combination of the volcano erupting, road trips with Spanish girls, a crazy landlady, Berlin girls and the luck in finding some amazing works and spinning them in an emotional way. Luck always plays its part. Nothing was planned at all and I think you can hear that.
We can then say it was a combination of the volcano erupting, road trips with Spanish girls, a crazy landlady, Berlin girls and the luck in finding some amazing works and spinning them in an emotional way. Luck always plays its part. Nothing was planned at all and I think you can hear that.
Well I have no idea right now. At the moment I work every day and hope something makes sense from this work and release things which I have a strong emotional connection with. It’s important right now to say less and make more I feel. I am very excited about the possibilities right now and feel very inspired and hope to capture these feelings. I’m interested to see what is next.
Well it’s a fantastic time for music right now, everything is available out there and sometimes it may seem a little overwhelming but the key is focus and search and the surprises and connections can still be found. Always we all search for the magical moments and hope they too will find us.
Interview made by Klemen Breznikar / 2012
© Copyright http://psychedelicbaby.blogspot.com/ 2012
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