Thoughts?

I second

EATEOT is probably the watershed moment for 21st century music. It accurately diagnoses our cultural malaise for what it is, as Mark Fisher wrote "As The Caretaker project has developed, though, it has become more about amnesia than memory. Theoretically pure anterograde amnesia is not about the inability to remember, so much as the incapacity to make new memories."

in our boring dystopia, art cannot progress PAST this record/this project, until we see a new future on the horizon, until we have the capacity to make new memories. Until then, music (and all culture) will be like that crackling record lock groove, retreading over its own disoriented memories, confusing the past for the now, feeling the opposite of deja vu as it looks on the familiar with pleasant unfamiliarity. But sir, you've ALWAYS been the Caretaker.

>mfw the last moments of the album

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I listened to the whole thing in one day yesterday. The final few tracks are some of the most unsettling shit I've heard.

Dude this is fucking shit.

Isn't this guy that "match in the rock" album that has like 20 million views on YouTube?

link to where i can hear it?

the first stage of dementia is no symptoms, we're all essentially in the first stage, but you won't know it unless you get diagnosed with the 2nd. The 2-7th are really 1-6th, and correspond to the EATEOT series

I'm listening to it right now. Is it exclusively just old recordings rendered in lo-fi or what? Did they write these compositions themselves

Stage 1: 8/10, literally just a slightly better Empty Bliss
2: 8.5/10, now we're talking
3: 9/10, oh shit
4: 9/10, "temporary bliss state" my ass
5: 9/10, my day is ruined
6: 9.5/10, AOTY, those last five minutes
the entire thing: 10/10, AOTD, he out-Basinski'd Basinski himself with this one

it's all samples, but it's not all just lo-fi samples. it's going to change gears in stage 2 and progressively get better and better

>easy-listening
so fucking incorrect, the last three stages are emotionally draining as hell
yes, but this is better than that one
see

i've only listened to stage 1 and 2, right now i'm listening to stage 3 but holy shit i didn't expect this

also, what i like about this series its that if i jump to stage 5 or 6 onyl for 10 seconds its like a spoiler about what is coming, well done leyland

SOmeone please confirm or deny this with a "yes" or a "no", without lengthy explanations on how our metamodernist, hypercapitalist society has led to how important these albums are: are they just hours and hours of scratchy, repeated, slowing changing snippets of dixieland jazz?

short answer: yes

long answer: yes they are just good hours and hours of scratchy, repeated, slowing changing snippets of dixieland jazz

no, the samples are virtually gone by stage 4

1-3 yes basically, 4-6 no, not at all

no, the originals are barely recognizable by the end of 3 - start of 4

If the samples are gone, what is there? crackling and vague ambience?

STAGE 4 - (G+H+I+J)
Post-Awareness Stage 4 is where serenity and the ability to recall singular memories gives way to confusions and horror. It's the beginning of an eventual process where all memories begin to become more fluid through entanglements, repetition and rupture.

STAGE 5 - (K+L+M+N)
Post-Awareness Stage 5 confusions and horror.
More extreme entanglements, repetition and rupture can give way to
calmer moments. The unfamiliar may sound and feel familiar.
Time is often spent only in the moment leading to isolation.

STAGE 6 - (O+P+Q+R)
Post-Awareness Stage 6 Is without description.

short answer: yes, it's ambient
long answer: yes, it's ambient, and you're grasping for straws. all ambient is exactly how you describe it

why don't you listen to it yourself

I'd argue that a good deal of ambient is more than that; i.e., it is structured, written, composed on a level that you just can't get with pure sampling and effects. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not criticizing his simplicity, just curious.
because the six or so hours it takes to listen through it is a pretty big time investment, and i'd like to know if it's worth it.

and I'd argue that EATEOT is also more than that, which you wouldn't know since you haven't even tried it. yes, it's six and a half hours, but that's the entire thing taken together. you can listen to each stage with breaks between. that's how the rest of us have been listening, since they weren't all released at once. listen to the first one, then wait a while until you feel like listening to the second, and so on

hey, im listening to it. no need to get short. the first few tracks are pretty good, if because of the jazz and not the crackly noises. But i know, its the transformation of the samples that matter, not the samples themselves.

it's foolish to think it isn't composed, structured, planned. Leyland Kirby has been making music since the mid-90s, and he's been prolific as hell. this release is the culmination and completion of a 20 year project, planned to be released over 3 years, with stages of progression toward an end goal. It's very deliberate. The early novelty of making music that sounds like the Shining's ballroom scene has become a much more rich and difficult aesthetic approach. like says, Kirby is in league with the big boys, and arguably has lifted a heavier conceptual weight. Imagine if someone said of the disintegration loops "so is just that same loop with more or less crackling/distortion for an hour?" or of Bryar's Jesus Blood "it's just the one vocal loop with sentimental orchestral swells for an hour?"

I can tell this album is going to get a bunch of hate in a few months, just because everyone who really likes it talks about it so pretentiously and smugly.

The important thing is you get used to these old songs, become familiar with them, so when he starts manipulating them more intensely it also plays with your memory of them, your familiarity. it's like in a novel where there's a process of setting up plot/context. you need that first so it can be transformed effectively. Idk if you'll think it's worth the effort, but I enjoy the old jazz samples alone, and as material for the rest of the album

Yes, after doing some more research into it i see its a much more creative project than I had originally taken it for, but im still not certain (planning time regardless) that a work constructed entirely out of samples could ever express originality in a way that original works do. That being said, I did think the disintegration loops were a pretentious, low-effort experiment that ultimately held little artistic merit, but thats a whole other can of worms. I'd never heard of Jesus' blood, though, so thanks for the recommendation.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining it without the condescending attitude.

I'm actually surprised how there was little discussion, and even shitposting, during the stage releases. And regarding the latter, I wish it stays that way

So the choral vocals at the end are supposed to be heaven/ some sort of after life right? I found that to be a really interesting end to an otherwise incredibly dark and realist concept series. You go on this downward spiral across the series into bleaker and bleaker waters, but that optimistic ending was not something I saw coming

it's because every genre that The Caretaker touches happens to be one that's not that popular. literally nobody cares about jazz from before the 30's anymore, approximately five people care about electroacoustic/tape/turntable music, and ambient and noise, the most popular genres of the project, are both underdiscussed on Yea Forums as a matter of course

This is so fucking good I'm literally in tears laughing at how incredible this sounds - the bongos, the maracas, the snapping it's all so good

I heard it more as a moment of peace before death, considering that the solid minute straight of silence at the end probably means death
???

>A concept album about dementia
Sounds cool to me, how long is it in total?

The complete series is approximately 6 and a half hours. This album in particular is a bit over 80 minutes

the first three parts average around 45 minutes each, and the last three parts are nearly 90 minutes each, totaling 6.5 hours

It's a reference to the song "Friends past reunited" from the first Caretaker album. The first three Caretaker albums (The Haunted Ballroom, Starway to the Stars, Riding on a Rainbow) seem to have more of a spiritual or ghostly context to them compared to the more memory-affliction focused releases afterwords. It feels like him going full circle with the project to end where he began.

Fuck off nigger

>6 hours of essentially “I am sitting in a room” by Alvin Lucier

Um no thanks

I was about to post that. I'm relistening to Selected Memories from the Haunted Balloon, just got into that track.

this is a terrible take, and you should feel bad for making it

How is it any different? From what I assume it’s just the jazz melodies from part A getting more distorting, oooow so spooky and sad xd

you have now contradicted yourself. originally, it was six hours of I Am Sitting In A Room, so it's a sample of someone speaking slowly nested within itself; now, it's six hours of jazz slowly losing fidelity. please keep your shitposts logically consistent in the future

Soooo, it is 6 hours of jazz losing fidelity?

IT'S CALLED EVERYWHERE AT THE END OF TIMES AND IT'S THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTRONIC PROJECT PRODUCED THIS DECADE

no. it's three hours of samples of jazz losing fidelity, followed by three hours of (allegedly the same) jazz samples reused to produce ambient sound collage

What’s the best way to listen to this? All 6 hours at once? I’m a purist so I don’t know if I could listen to it without the 6 hours at once extreme

its vintage jazz ballroom. take it as it is, ambient

it doesn't need to be in one sitting. the majority of us listened to it as it came out, with month long gaps between. feel free to take breaks between each; I've heard people say that it actually helps the experience since then you've forgotten some of what you've already heard ("have I heard that sample before? it sounds vaguely familiar, am I forgetting or just confused? do I have Alzheimer's? what is real? how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?")