James Kirby is a man who has hidden behind not only a number of pseudonyms, but also a pig mask when he was part of V/vm. Remembered, probably not that fondly, for their savage overhauls of Shakin' Stevens, Chris de Burgh, and the like, V/vm were audio terrorists, frequently making the unlistenable, unlistenable (to paraphrase a BBC slogan). That project has only recently been put to rest, but Kirby has been moving steadily away from the modus operandi of V/vm for the past decade.
His best-known recording identity is The Caretaker, which he adopted for 1999's Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom. The album submerges samples of popular songs from over half a century previous in a bath of subtly distorting effects, resulting in an album of woozy listening, with the occasional jolting blast of noise to remind the listener that all was not well. The inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's movie The Shining is clear both in artist and album name, and wisely, Kirby kept the identity and the modus operandi for future works, which saw the old 78s gradually drift away and clouds of distorting noise billow in.
The Caretaker name is being put on hold for Kirby's latest opus, as he is adopting the name Leyland Kirby for a number of reasons. In a combination of nods to the past and the present, Leyland Kirby is a tribute to his grandfather of the same name while also being easier to Google than James Kirby (be warned that the only other person who comes up in the search engine is a Kirby Leyland - a comely maiden whose web presence is N-entirely-SFW). A further reason for the use of the name Leyland might be an association with the battered old flagship of the British motor industry.
If one thinks of abandoned car factories and long since vanished days of glory, then Detroit usually springs to mind. However, the British also (mis-)managed a successful car company into submission, so the vision of gray concrete fields filled with unwanted vehicles fits in with the bleak, expansive nature of Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was, a vast ambient work that sits across three CDs, or six slabs of vinyl - with a further two CDs of alternate versions also available for the really keen. Although the vinyl edition is currently out of stock, it would probably be the preferred medium for this release, cutting down the extended work into much more manageable chunks. Queuing up the trilogy on an iPod to listen to in entirety is just foolhardy.
The experience of listening to Sadly... in one sitting is not unlike being lost in the labyrinthine crypt of an ancient Gothic cathedral in a European capital somewhere. It is dark, forbidding, and at times one is never quite sure if an exit will ever be found. That seemingly constant rumble in the background - is that from the nearby subway train or has the organist drunkenly fallen asleep, pressing down pedals and keys as he slumps forward? This may be an immersible experience, but after a while one is not waving but drowning, dragged down by the weight of the ambient drone that Kirby unleashes. Even the lighter pieces cannot hold back the overall bleak effects; the green shoots that aim to add a little color are lost, suffocated amongst the dark forbidding forest of sound. Taken as individual CDs or sides of vinyl, it all becomes a bit more digestible.
In fairness to Kirby, the overall tone of the album is indicated merely by looking at the track titles - "The Sound of Music Vanishing" is clearly not about losing the DVD of a favorite musical but rather is a metallic drone that expresses the futility of existence in a world without melody. The pretty music box tune that opens "And Nothing Comes Between The Silence And The Scream" is soon enough corrupted and distorted by the slow pulsing throb of an organ's bass notes. Surely, not since Bogdan Raczynski's Thinking Of You have there been so many lengthy track titles that express similar emotions of loss and heartbreak - although Bogdan communicated his feelings through brutally programmed drums, rave synths, and in about one-sixth of the time.
Although Sadly... avoids the sampled material of The Caretaker, the oppressive environment remains, as if the haunted ballroom never hosted dance bands, only pianists performing Erik Satie's Vexations into infinity. "Between the Twilight and the Dawn" imagines the Harold Budd who recorded "Dark Star" meeting his older self at around the time of By The Dawn's Early Light, with both Budds combining in a mix of organic drone and semi-improvised piano playing. It is the piano that is the weak link in many of the pieces, sounding thin and reedy - it is either a programmed synth sound or just badly recorded but whichever is the case, the results lack any real depth. They sound lost compared to the fuller drones that occur elsewhere, which carry echoes of Nurse With Wound's more ambient works, seemingly calm on the surface but full of hidden menace.
The Caretaker projects saw Kirby apply a similar technique as V/vm to older pieces but with more subtlety, care, and understanding. Now, as Leyland Kirby, he is exploring nostalgia, melancholia, and the sadness of things by dispensing with the samples and producing this haunting work. It is still some way short of the ambient drone masterpiece that a three disc set might have suggested, with the four hour running time having a detrimental effect on listeners who should probably just content themselves to dip in.
There are many other artists who are operating in the field of ambient drone so presumably Kirby went for the big statement as a way to gain a higher profile, as he did with Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia (available for free here). But its sheer immensity makes it forbidding for the inquiring mind who would probably be happier exploring the genre via Svarte Greiner's recent work or The Caretaker's own excellent Persistent Repetition of Phrases. One can only hope that in future, however it turns out, artistically more will actually mean physically less from Leyland Kirby.
-Jeremy Bye