By ISAAC SERRATO
Staff Writer
Leland James Kirby is an English ambient music composer born on May 9th, 1974 who is well known for his hit masterpiece project “The Caretaker” with his big success being, “Everywhere At The End Of Time” gaining fame and praise from the internet and music critics. Kirby for a time made up a fictional alias “The Caretaker” this alias was given dementia in the music “Everywhere At The End Of Time” to explore dementia with Kirby explaining “Each stage will reveal new points of progression, loss and disintegration”. Kirby made music of the Caretaker going through dementia in three works “An Empty Bliss Beyond This Empty World” (2011), “Everywhere At The End Of Time” (2016-2019) “Take Care It’s A Desert Out There” (2017) giving a total of 9 hours of ambient music about dementia to which I listened to all of it. It was brutal but it was worth it in the end as the calming music slowly turning into distorted nightmare fuel was horribly beautiful, showing the horror and confusion of people who suffer from dementia.
(Popular amatuer music critic Anthony Fantho cries listening to “Everywhere At The End Of The World”)
Each work goes through different stages of dementia with “An Empty Bliss Beyond This World” (2011) giving a 50 minute run time of the early stages of dementia to late stage dementia. The album is at first strangely beautiful playing ballroom music from the 1920s-30s with loops, slight static and sounding distant and nostalgic. Then progressively as the album continues the static gets more prevalent, the music loops more, and the music sounds more distant, giving a sense that your once joyful memories are disappearing. Then some songs are hard to hear with constant loops, loud static, strange sounds. Feelings of frustration, confusion and horror take over as you can’t remember the music as the track will repeat songs but play them differently or realize that victims of Alzheimer’s fall victim to this confusion and horror as they try their best to remember but can’t. The track ends on a hollow song with far, distant, sad music, present disotration, and a feeling of isolation in such an amazing way that is unique.
Kirby’s most famous piece of music is “Everywhere At The End Of Time” (2016-2019) showing the Caretaker’s mental decline. There are 6 albums in total each representing a stage of dementia, this music portrays the cognitive decline in such a way people were reporting powerful emotions such as frustration, horror, isolation, sadness and confusion, common emotions that dementia people feel. The track also was daring was it tired it best to mick memory loss by replaying the same tracks in each stage but every time it’s played it progressively gets more distorted, more static, more loops and the music sounds far, distant, with new strange, terrifying sounds added to replicate hallucinations that happens to Alzheimer’s victims. The “Caretaker” in a whole is a beautiful piece of music as in the first three albums are beautiful playing old jazz age and ballroom music with no words giving a sense of nostalgia but later in the last three albums it shows the true terror of memory loss. The tracks that were once so familiar become scary as they are destroyed beyond recognition and frustration as you try your hardest to remember what they once sound like. The sixth album is emotionally the hardest as the music is nothing but an eternal void with ambient noise and heavily distorted music. Symbolishing a empty husk, a person is in late stage dementia. The “Caretaker” is a great piece of work showing beauty in music but showing existential horror on cognitive decline.
(my reaction to the music before stage 4)
Then the Caretaker (alias for Kirby during the project) released his final work called “Take Care It’s A Desert Out There” (2017) dedicated to his friend Mark Fisher. The music is about death, a grim collection on our final thoughts passing into the afterlife. The music is eerie, existential, grim and bewilderment. The ambient music perfectly captures death, a quiet hum with no end. The music is okay but it captures our fear of death. What will it be like and Kirby says it’s a grim desert with an eternal hum with no end.
After the end of “Everywhere At The End Of Time” was finished “The Caretaker” (the fictional alias of Kirby) died of dementia which is supposed to symbolize the damage that demnita can do to people not just ruin their lives but also kill them.
Overall, Kirby managed to make ambient music about Alzheimer’s, dementia, memory loss and nostalgia. The music does get a little repetitive and annoying with the loops in music and overbearing static. But those negatives in a way help the music as they show how cognitive decline affects the sick person’s memory, slowly distorting their reality and chipping away at their health. To describe the music is hard with words but I’ll try. It’s like to remember all the good memories but some things are slipping but no worries, then you notice fragments, little problems but you deny it. Then you are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and trying to remember is difficult as you can’t only little fragments, you are scared and confused on what is going on, isolation takes place as you don’t remember anything or anyone. Finally, you turn into a husk of your former self. That’s what Kirby managed to do, finally being able to show through music the horror and confusion of memory loss.
(Cover photo of the stage 4 album post-awareness confusion)