Birth name James Kirby Role Electronic musician Name The Caretaker | Years active 1996 to present Record label V/Vm Test Records | |
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Also known as Billy Ray Cyrix, Butcher Claus, Butcher Claws, CV[ev], Dr. Fred, Edgeley Musher, The, Leon And Hits, MC V/Vm, Notorious P.I.G., The, Pole (disputed), Stranger, The, V/Vm Allstar Marching Band, V/Vm And The Hog Chorus, V/Vm With Garry's Glitter Music director Patience: After Sebald, Room 237 Albums An Empty Bliss Beyond T, Patience (After Sebald), The Death Of Rave (A partial fla, We Drink to Forget the Coming S, Watching Dead Empires i Similar People Matt Elliott, Falco, James Plotkin, Anla Courtis, J‑Zone | ||
The Caretaker is a long-running project by electronic musician James Leyland Kirby alongside his better-known project V/Vm. Initially the project was inspired by the haunted ballroom scene in the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining, with his first several releases consisting of treated and manipulated samples of '30s ballroom pop recordings. His work has been characterised as exploring memory, nostalgia, and melancholia.
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Theoretically pure anterograde amnesia was released in 2005 as a series of 72 free MP3 downloads. In 2006 this was pressed up as a limited edition 6 CD boxset with an additional 12 tracks. The release itself found much critical acclaim: it was record of the week in Stylus Magazine, received a favourable review in Grooves Magazine, and was given an honorary mention at the ARS Technica awards for Digital Musics in Austria, 2007.
Older works have received critical acclaim in publications as diverse as Russian Playboy and the BBC, and the project was a favourite of legendary BBC Radio DJ John Peel, who regularly played audio by The Caretaker on his shows.
The caretaker friends past
As The Caretaker
