Published
Tue, May 10, 2011, 11:30
- Jim Kirby's latest album returns to the haunted ballroom.
Jim Kirby will release his next album as The Caretaker this June, entitled An Empty Bliss Beyond This World.
Kirby is a Berlin-based experimental artist who has worked under a host of different aliases; most of his work has been as V/Vm or The Stranger, but he's also toyed with odd monikers like Butcher Claus, Bored in Columbia, Billy Ray Cyrix and more than a dozen others. Since 2008 he's devoted himself to haunting ambient music, as Leyland Kirby or as The Caretaker. Whether through his own production or with samples of dusty old ballroom records, this more recent work explores themes of "memory and decay over time," as Chris Mann described it in his review of the 2009 triple-disc package, Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World continues in this vein. According a press release, it's inspired by the finding that Alzheimer's patients, despite their general memory loss, can still recall songs they heard in the distant past. As with The Caretaker's previous releases, the cover art is a specially commissioned painting by Ivan Seal.
Tracklist
01. All You're 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 Long Term 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
History Always Favors the Winners will release An Empty Bliss Beyond This World on June 6th, 2011.