★History Always Favours The Winners
Patience (After Sebald)
Now over a decade old, this 2012 album is the soundtrack to acclaimed filmmaker Grant Gee's documentary about German writer WG Sebald. It’s been out of print since 2013 and remains a lesser known gem in The Caretaker catalogue.
Persistent Repetition Of Phrases
First re-press in a decade for The Caretaker’s 2009 masterpiece, one of the earliest and most iconic releases on his label History Always Favours the Winners, and a true classic of the early 21st century. Spine shivers, all the way.
An empty bliss beyond this world
**2019 edition pressed on silver vinyl**. An Empty Bliss Beyond This World’ is perhaps The Caretaker’s most coveted and cherished venture into the haunted ballroom of the subconscious. It fetches a lot of moldy dough on the 2nd hand market, hence this new edition will be welcomed by many who’ve only picked up The Caretaker’s frayed thread since this album was first released in 2011. Redefining ideas of “ambient” music on its release toward the start of this decade, the deeply unheimlich feel an…
Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 4
2019 Small Repress. Fourth in a series of six albums from The Caretaker cataloguing the effects of early-onset dementia. Featuring four extended, smudged and hallucinatory side-long pieces - the darkest and most immersive music from The Caretaker to date.The Caretaker slips into the first “post awareness” stage of Everywhere At The End of Time. The ability to recall singular memories gives way to confusions and horror; the beginning of a process where all memories begin to become more fluid thro…
Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 3
2019 Small Repress. The third of a six album cycle cataloguing The Caretaker's fictional first person account of life with early onset dementia, presenting some of the last coherent memories before confusion fully rolls in and the grey mists fade away. In this crepuscular, autumnal phase, recollections phosphoresce, and wilt in advancing stages of entropic decay, steadily approaching a winter of no return. Continuing to mirror the progression of dementia, using nostalgia for ballroom as an alleg…
Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 2
2019 Small Repress. The second of six LPs issued under the title Everywhere At The End of Time, cataloguing The Caretaker’s fictional first person account of life with early onset dementia. This second stage takes a more wistful tack as our protagonist gradually realises that all is not well and begins to rummage deeper into the recesses of his mind, masking emotions of grief, loss, fear and uncertainty. As The Caretaker’s short term memory functions begin to more rapidly erode, the loop-based …
Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 1
2019 small repress. Everywhere At The End of Time is the first in a series of six albums by The Caretaker, aka James Leyland Kirby, slowly cataloguing the stages of early onset dementia. Each album will reveal new points of progression, loss and disintegration, progressively falling further and further towards the abyss of complete memory loss and nothingness. Viewing dementia as a series of stages can be a useful way to understand the illness, but it is important to realize that this only prov…
Everywhere At The End Of Time 4-6
Deluxe collectors edition - four CD set housed inside a deluxe 8-panel digifile with artwork by Ivan Seal. Includes a download of the full set dropped in your account. Compiling the final three albums in the 'Everywhere At The End Of Time' series - 4 x CD's and almost 5 hours of material cataloguing the ultimate descent into dementia and oblivion, using a patented prism of sound to connote a final, irreversible transition into the haunted ballroom of the mind that The Caretaker first stepped in…
Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 6
Last copies. The final release from The Caretaker (1999-2019). The Caretaker provides closure to a 20 year-long act that has uncannily lurked in the shadows of so many of our listening lives. Clad for the last time in Ivan Seal’s specially commissioned artwork, ’Stage 6’ sees The Caretaker mirroring the ultimate descent into dementia and oblivion, using a patented prism of sound to connote a final, irreversible transition into the haunted ballroom of the mind that he first stepped into with 1999…
Bleaklow
New vinyl edition (300 copies) of this killer. Fully remastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy. One of the most destitute and absorbing albums in Leyland Kirby’s canon is finally given a much needed vinyl pressing, following on from its initial CD release 6 years ago. ‘Bleaklow’ is harrowing from the start, the opening "Something To Do With Death” reverberating dread via layers of unstable, radiant drones punctuated with pained, hi-pitched howls that cut through the mix with violent intent. ’Solemn D…
Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 5
Penultimate, 5th Stage of The Caretaker’s ‘Everywhere At The End of Time’ series charting severe levels of musical/mental deterioration and sensory detachment through four extended, smudged and hallucinatory side-long pieces. As we near the end, ‘Stage 5’ sees our protagonist enter a near-permanent state of confusion and horror. Mirroring the endemic deterioration of dementia’s latter phases, were pulled through the most extreme entanglements in the series so far; repetition and ruptures, barely…
The death of rave (a partial flashback)
James Leyland Kirby's near-mythical 'The Death Of Rave' material finally given a proper release - original rave classics deconstructed into hazy, ambient flashbacks* Finally, after years of haranguing, Leyland Kirby finally yields 'A Partial Flashback' 8-track vinyl edition of his 204-track dancefloor elegy 'The Death Of Rave'. Conceived after a visit to Berghain in 2006 where, according to the artist "For me personally something had died"Rave and techno felt dead to me", the monumental and unca…
Everywhere At The End Of Time Stages 1-3
Compiling the first 3 albums in the 'Everywhere At The End Of Time' series - two and a half hours long, each album reveals new points of progression, loss and disintegration, progressively falling further and further towards the abyss of complete memory loss and nothingness...Embarking on the Caretaker’s final journey with the familiar vernacular of abraded shellac 78s and their ghostly waltzes to emulate the entropic effect of a mind becoming detached from everyone else’s sense of realit…
Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was Pt.3
For the first time since 2009, the third and final part of Leyland Kirby’s hauntological masterpiece Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was is available on vinyl again. The synthetic lustre of Memories Live Longer Than Dreams already appeared deliciously cracked and damaged the first time around, and in 2017 its phosphorescent glow remains a beacon of shelter for contemplation and secluded mind-drift, offering a surreal, nostalgic night-light to the gloomy and confused world it diagnose…
Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was Pt.1
The first part of Leyland Kirby, aka The Caretaker's, 'Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was' series, originally released back in 2009 and now finally reissued. It's a prescient hauntological elegy somewhere between Vangelis’ Bladerunner OST, Lynch & Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks score, Erik Satie’s solo Piano works, William Basinski’s gradual tape decompositions and James Ferraro’s washed out visions, like a slowly abstracted Berlin/Manchester night-scape. Tbh it seems to have even more …
When We Parted My Heart Wanted To Die
The first part of Leyland Kirby, aka The Caretaker's, 'Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was' series, originally released back in 2009 and now finally reissued. It's a prescient hauntological elegy somewhere between Vangelis’ Bladerunner OST, Lynch & Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks score, Erik Satie’s solo Piano works, William Basinski’s gradual tape decompositions and James Ferraro’s washed out visions, like a slowly abstracted Berlin/Manchester night-scape. Tbh it seems to have even more …
Everywhere At The End Of Time
2017 repress. Everywhere At The End of Time is the first in a series of six albums by The Caretaker, aka James Leyland Kirby, slowly cataloguing the stages of early onset dementia. Each album will reveal new points of progression, loss and disintegration, progressively falling further and further towards the abyss of complete memory loss and nothingness. Viewing dementia as a series of stages can be a useful way to understand the illness, but it is important to realize that this only provi…
Intrigue & Stuff Volumes 1-4
All Four Volumes of Intrigue & Stuff available as a limited edition set, all four volumes pressed on clear vinyl and including an instant download of all volumes - 19 tracks!
Intrigue & Stuff Vol.4
James Leyland Kirby returns with an uncompromising, poetic and unexpected 4th and final instalment of his long-dormant 'Intrigue & Stuff' series despatched from his new base in Krakow for his own History Always Favours The Winners label. Since we last heard from the provocateur he's issued brilliant albums as The Caretaker and The Stranger, a cracking 12" for his formative heroes R&S/Apollo, and marked his 40th Birthday last week with a 40-track album of Piano pieces...yet we can't help but feel…
Intrigue & Stuff Vol.3
Almost 40 minutes of incredible, original, completely unsocialised brilliance sounding somewhere between Vangelis, Armando and John Carpenter** The third volume of four in this incredible series, beamed direct from the depths of Berlin onto vinyl. Our maverick protagonist again looks to the future mindful of the past, following a twisted trajectory from imagination to realisation which would leave lesser artists and musicians exhausted (or in need of drying out). But as we all know, his …