The Caretaker - Everywhere At The End Of Time

What the fuck?

After writing about Burial recently and declaring him THE musician of the Millennium, I've been challenging that declaration in my head. The only other real contender I can come up with is The Caretaker, I think. Although the entire premise of this idea is bit of a pointless folly innit?, perhaps belonging more to the 20th century. While looking for an audio clip to use in this discussion I came across a phenomenon I had no idea was occurring. 

How on earth has The Caretaker's six and a half hour demented experimental masterpiece Everywhere At The End Of Time had over 28 million views on youtube in less than four years? What the hell is going on? Why has a 6 volume concept album about dementia found a teenage following in the 2020s? 

I would have thought The Caretaker was the kind of artist to sell a few thousand copies of each record in every western capital city, retaining a worldwide underground cult status. However it's not the 90s anymore and my brain is not really fit for analysis of this millennium. There are all sorts of ways music becomes known now not just from the radio, music videos and movie soundtracks like in the 80s. I mean I do know about downloads, going viral and youtube algorithms but I'm not fully across what the fuck tik-tok challenges, creepypastas and modding are. Nor do I particularly care.

It seems someone with a black sense of humour went on tik-tok during the lockdowns in 2020 and challenged the kids to endure over six hours of largely ominous atmospheric noise that at the extremes can be either disturbing or lovely. Somehow it caught on like wildfire and a perfect storm coalesced on the interwebs to catapult The Caretaker to blockbuster status.

Along with this challenge other factors including youtube breakdown videos, modding, (cover)art critiques, exhibitions, urban legends, supreme nerdy fandom, bandcamp algorithms, parody albums, tribute albums, fan art albums etc. contributed to The Caretaker becoming widely known on the 2020s internet. It's particularly interesting that none of the individual videos of each of the 6 volumes have reached a million views but the video for the entire 6 volumes combined has reached 28 million views. That's pretty wild.

I can't recall if I ever heard Everywhere At The End Of Time without the knowledge that it was supposed to be a journey into senility. I probably would have thought of it as some kinda beast betwixt lovely and haunted. Once you know the premise for the record existing though you cannot un-know that fact and it will always taint your listening experience. However his previous work had been about nostalgia, haunted memory, decay, amnesia, regret, brain disorders etc. so I guess it wasn't a stretch for my mind to be thinking about the intended themes of this album. 

This ambitious project is a meticulously constructed sonic world brilliantly depicting the brain devolving through a myriad of states from calm, blissful, confused, nostalgic, despondent, disoriented, empty and terrified to eventually disintegrating into oblivion. 

Everywhere At The End Of Time: Stage 5 was my favourite upon release as noted in my 2018 round-up. Now I think Volume 4 is the one for me personally. I've also found a new appreciation for the first three LPs in this set particularly the third volume. The first two LPs in this series are usually seen as less noteworthy because they go over similar ground covered on The Caretaker's first three albums (Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom (99), A Stairway To The Stars (02) & We'll All Go Riding On A Rainbow (03)) but they actually give a new perspective on that trademarked scratchy music hall style to align with the MO of Everywhere At The End Of Time. All records in this set are great and an integral part of the listening experience which should entail listening to them in order to get the full effect. However each volume can be listened to by itself as they stand up on their own merits which is a testament to the vision of The Caretaker aka Leyland Kirby. 

The bittersweet Glimpses Of Hope In Trying Times is the outstanding track from Stage 2. It breaks up the lovely Ballroom nostalgia that has gone before and foreshadows the ominous demise soon to be experienced on later records in the set. 

Nash The Slash - The Chase

(1979)

Another tune that is new to me but it turns out I've heard music written and performed by Nash The Slash before as he was a member of Canadian space-prog-pop group FM, appeared on Gary Numan records and did the soundtrack to 90s cult movie Highway 61. Novelty music lovers might remember him as the dude dressed up as a mummy with sunglasses who played excellent electric mandolin and electric violin. 

Riveting synth-y car chase theme goodness. 

"fun, fun, fun on the..."

The Last Four Digits - I Have Rental Car

Heard this tune for the first time today. The band name is vaguely familiar like maybe I learnt about them back in the heyday of Mutant Sounds (?)... anyway back in 1980 they released their one and only record but this is from their unreleased album recorded in 81 or 82. The tracks from these sessions didn't see light of day until 2017 when Timechange Records released the compilation Don't Move.

All the elements of the time are present in this good fun melange: Synth-punk, no-wave, post-punk, new-wave Beefheart damage, miscellaneous etc. to give us something like Fire Engines meets DNA meets Voigt 465 or something like that... 

Burial - Shutta

(2007)

It's like post-punk and dub-tech working in collusion to stop a zippy speed garage tune escaping by smothering it in darkness. 

Sometimes I wonder why would we choose to listen to this over an actual speed garage tune from say 1998. 

Is gloomifying a genre anything to be proud of? Is this just kinda pin pricking the hardcore/rave elation balloon and giving back in to 80s miserableism?

Is this the only way for miserable rockist/indie/goth types to enjoy 2 step garage? ie. with all the fun taken out, dysphoric speed garridge if you will.

On the other side of the coin it's in the great British tradition of post-punk dub, sound system culture, Wild Bunch/Massive Attack/Tricky milieu and the darkside of the hardcore continuum innit?

Cracking tune right. One of his best. 

Bob Dylan - Hurricane

Does anyone ever say Bob is ecstatic? Because that's what this tune is, totally. The chorus-y bits where the music drops out and it's just the congas with the raucous singing, from Bob & backing vocalists Ronee Blakley & Steephen Soles, is just the ticket, innit? The energetic delivery of this incredible narrative is so inspired. Not so much all about the meaning of the lyrics but also the sound of the words, the way they fit together, the rambunctious manner in which they're performed and spontaneously captured on tape.

Congas are played by the mysterious Luther Rix. It's weird that millions of us know those congas so well but very few of us know the name of the man responsible. Like we should all know the trumpet guy from All You Need Is Love or the the co-vocalist of Gimme Shelter. Actually I'm sure I used to know who that was and I'm pretty sure I saw a mini documentary on that trumpeter once. We could run into Luther Rix in the street and we wouldn't even know he was the legend who played those furious congas on Hurricane.  

LUTHER RIX with BOB

*This post was supposed to be about the criminalisation of words, social media censorship and freedom of speech but I just got tangled up in Bob.

Burial - Antidawn

After making such a grand statement about Burial in my Best Of 2022 list ie. that he's undeniably THE musical visionary of the 21st century, I''m starting to interrogate that line of thinking (surely I forgot The Caretaker). It was very easy to just automatically write such an assertion as though it were true and believe that most thinkers about such things around the world would also obviously agree. 

Surely Burial aka William Bevan's feeling the pressure of such thinking. It's probably why he hasn't called a release an album since 2007 despite several so called EPs being LP length. I mean last year he had to add EP at the end of the title for his Antidawn release, which is 5 minutes longer than Sgt Pepper's, so we all didn't call it his 3rd album. Is he too protective of his own critical reputation (like My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields was in the 90s)? Is he scared that calling his album an album will ensure it gets too closely scrutinised?

It's an interesting ploy that I think has perhaps backfired upon him. Now we all just think Burial's work is insignificant because it's just his miniature cast offs not to be taken all that seriously. If Antidawn had indeed been called an album I think it would have garnered a lot more interest and that definitely would have been deserved. It may well have been hailed as his 3rd masterpiece. Even if it was only hailed as that by half of the usual critics it still would have been a better result than the dwindling interest it actually got.

Also is it up to him to call an album an album? We should have all just called it an album because it is an album.

Speaking of critics. Some of the laziest and most absolutely wrong bullshit gets tossed around in the name of critique and analysis of Burial: Ambient, insubstantial, not engaging, formless, not an easy listen etc. ad nauseam for fuck's sake!  

It's not fucking ambient dickheads. None of this sound is to be ignored. It's bloody operatic, too emotional, full of sensations many of which are perhaps too liminal for articulation, feelings are switched on and off sometimes in a furious flurry and Antidawn is fucking anthemic! Anthemic: That sounds anti-ambient to me.

It's not fucking Insubstantial! Just because it doesn't have a riff, a break, a bass drop, a bloody verse/chorus/verse or a song structure that represents a god damn pre-existing genre on autopilot doth not maketh this record insubstantial. Antidawn is so substantial it fucks with me for 44 minutes, toys with my soul for 44 minutes, transfixes me for 44 minutes, loses me in its delectable sound-world for 44 minutes, nothing else matters for that 44 minutes.

It's not fucking formless. In fact it is intricately structured to a fastidious degree to give us a spectrum of dramatic effects. Wild swinging jaw dropping dramatic arcs that have the hairs standing up on the back of your neck... now that doesn't sound particularly formless does it? 

It's not fucking not engaging! Antidawn is so compelling it's like your favourite, best, most watched movie. Every little detail is important, to be savoured and pored over. The entire LP is best heard from go to whoa. It's so striking it has me hanging on every tiny spec of sound and all of the vibes for er... 44 minutes.

It's not fucking not an easy listen! Just pump this sucker up to 11 and bam where did those 44 minutes go? 

Burial - South London Boroughs

(2006)

Skeletal, spectral, skeletal spectral or spectral skeletal it's all what this tune is. South London Boroughs is a skelington of a tune. As pointed out by others in the past, you fill in this tune in your mind with whatever elements you think are missing. A bit like a mirage. That ghost of a Rufige Kru mentasm stab looms large and sends over ten years of 'ardcore musical memories flooding vaguely back. The rhythm is just buggered, quite knackered. I think it was either Mark Fisher or Kode 9 who said you fill in the rest the rest of the beat to compensate for this deficiency. It's like you're a beat doctor fixing up the gimpy rhythm with your mind. The tromp l'oeil effect makes this an illusory tune whichever way you look at it.

Also isn't this what Scorn sounded like circa 94/95?

Burial: Nite Train

(2006)

I love how no critic ever mentions broken beat when talking about Burial. Sorry but he's influenced by broken beat. Dubstep fans who want to claim him as their own call him dubstep. While dubstep haters who love Burial claim he has nothing to do with dubstep. Anyway this track is now 18 fucking years old and it's Basic Channel style dub-tech intersecting with ghostly UK garage innit? I like it whatever you wanna call it...

Juaneco Y Su Combo - Linda Nena

Once you've gotten into Peruvian psych cumbia via the instrumentals from the late 60s/early 70s the next step is to follow the genre as it progresses through the 70s and into the 80s as it becomes much more song orientated. Then mysteriously in the late 80s it abruptly falls off the face of the earth altogether.

Linda Nena from 1976 is one of the most infectious anthems of the genre. It's got Peruvian pop hit written all over it and I guess you gotta to have a crack at singing it even though you don't understand the language because of its irresistible hooks. Once again the rhythm is out-fucking-standing and is just as key to the tune as the vocals are. Peak Peruvian cumbia!

Russian Sonic Microwave Attack or Cricket Mating Sounds or ???

Six or seven years ago in a doctor's waiting room I remember seeing on a mainstream television channel reports of people in an embassy office block in Havana being deliberately targeted by sonic attacks from the Russian military. I thought "Really is this shit real?" It put me in mind of shonky old sci-fi movies, The Twilight Zone, That's Incredible, shonky old sci-fi movies, The KLF, ye olde kids's books about spies, Hawkwind etc. but I never heard about these stories again. The other day however, while not feeling well, I went through Glenn Greenwald's entire rumble channel and this incredible post popped up from about a year ago. I don't think the CIA could have envisaged where this convoluted narrative would end up. 

It's just a shame that this entertaining and bizarre tale had to come from the nefarious actions of the state and establishment corporate media collaborating in a fraud with intentions to deceive & manipulate us: the public, the people, the citizens. We're just trying to have a good day and yet...