[Part 1 of a two-part comment; Part 2 can be found here]
Simon, this is a project that I really feel I should listen to as a means of developing greater empathy with my dad’s Alzheimer’s (treated as such – although, to date, still not officially diagnosed – from 2014 onwards, with a collective awareness (as opposed to mere suspicion) that something was seriously “up” having come around a year earlier). However, I made the mistake of putting Stage 1 on as background music while trying to work, and ended up having to switch it off around halfway through as the distress it was causing gradually began to render work nigh-on impossible. (Interestingly, I haven’t yet experienced the same reaction to Asher Tuil’s Miniatures, even though it may strike the casual listener as superficially similar, perhaps because it isn’t explicitly “about” dementia.)
Chris, it doesn’t surprise me that you had such a strong reaction to this music: i think Kirby has tapped into something genuinely remarkable in his work as The Caretaker, and as i’ve followed his work over the last decade-plus the extent to which i’ve realised the power of his dementia studies has grown massively. i’ll admit it took a while for the penny to drop, as a fair amount of his work – particularly in his V/Vm guise – is extremely tongue-in-cheek and irreverent (not unlike Richard James/Aphex Twin) so grasping the enormity and subtlety of this parallel (and, now, dominant) side of his artistic personality really wasn’t immediately obvious to me when i first encountered it – my own first contact was Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia – though i loved how immersive and vivid those soundworlds were.
If Stage 1 has hit you as hard as you describe, then i can only imagine what will happen when you listen to Stages 2 & 3 – they’re some of the most painful, heartbreaking music i’ve ever encountered, and though i have no personal experience of dementia among my family and friends, the clarity of Kirby’s vision – or, rather, the acutely obfuscated rendering of it in these incredible albums – is all too immediate, ever more swamped by bliss-ignorance and oblivion, where the walls of understanding are closing in tightly. For my own part, i tried listening to the latest part, Stage 4, the other night, but i realised within a few moments that this was entering much more complex psychological territory and i wasn’t awake enough to deal with it. To be continued…
Oh, and with regard to Asher’s Miniatures, i agree with you: the tone is hauntological but neutral, without the explicit emotional heft of Kirby’s music, which no doubt accounts for your different reaction.
Thank you for your considered responses to both parts of my comment, Simon. Actually, I’ve only just realised that I was three-quarters of the way through Stage 2 when I gave up: the way the project is arranged on the Bandcamp app (as “sides” rather than discrete albums) made me think I was still listening to Stage 1. No wonder I was getting so upset!
Update: I ultimately decided to give myself over (almost) entirely to the remainder of Stages 2 and 3 during a prolonged lunchtime walk, and found them much easier to cope with once I’d stopped trying to fight my own reaction to them. Funnily enough, now that I’ve reached Stage 4 I’m finding the music is generating much less cognitive dissonance, perhaps because it’s already passed through the “event horizon” of ready recognition…
[…] on repeating loops of music, affording mere windows into something much bigger and grander (what i’ve previously described as “like trying to preserve a story in a single sentence”). Even at the outset of Stage […]
Bo
4 years ago
This album is definitely haunted me since i first heard it, nothing else has ever had close to this sort of impact on me.
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[Part 1 of a two-part comment; Part 2 can be found here]
Simon, this is a project that I really feel I should listen to as a means of developing greater empathy with my dad’s Alzheimer’s (treated as such – although, to date, still not officially diagnosed – from 2014 onwards, with a collective awareness (as opposed to mere suspicion) that something was seriously “up” having come around a year earlier). However, I made the mistake of putting Stage 1 on as background music while trying to work, and ended up having to switch it off around halfway through as the distress it was causing gradually began to render work nigh-on impossible. (Interestingly, I haven’t yet experienced the same reaction to Asher Tuil’s Miniatures, even though it may strike the casual listener as superficially similar, perhaps because it isn’t explicitly “about” dementia.)
Chris, it doesn’t surprise me that you had such a strong reaction to this music: i think Kirby has tapped into something genuinely remarkable in his work as The Caretaker, and as i’ve followed his work over the last decade-plus the extent to which i’ve realised the power of his dementia studies has grown massively. i’ll admit it took a while for the penny to drop, as a fair amount of his work – particularly in his V/Vm guise – is extremely tongue-in-cheek and irreverent (not unlike Richard James/Aphex Twin) so grasping the enormity and subtlety of this parallel (and, now, dominant) side of his artistic personality really wasn’t immediately obvious to me when i first encountered it – my own first contact was Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia – though i loved how immersive and vivid those soundworlds were.
If Stage 1 has hit you as hard as you describe, then i can only imagine what will happen when you listen to Stages 2 & 3 – they’re some of the most painful, heartbreaking music i’ve ever encountered, and though i have no personal experience of dementia among my family and friends, the clarity of Kirby’s vision – or, rather, the acutely obfuscated rendering of it in these incredible albums – is all too immediate, ever more swamped by bliss-ignorance and oblivion, where the walls of understanding are closing in tightly. For my own part, i tried listening to the latest part, Stage 4, the other night, but i realised within a few moments that this was entering much more complex psychological territory and i wasn’t awake enough to deal with it. To be continued…
Oh, and with regard to Asher’s Miniatures, i agree with you: the tone is hauntological but neutral, without the explicit emotional heft of Kirby’s music, which no doubt accounts for your different reaction.
Thank you for your considered responses to both parts of my comment, Simon. Actually, I’ve only just realised that I was three-quarters of the way through Stage 2 when I gave up: the way the project is arranged on the Bandcamp app (as “sides” rather than discrete albums) made me think I was still listening to Stage 1. No wonder I was getting so upset!
Update: I ultimately decided to give myself over (almost) entirely to the remainder of Stages 2 and 3 during a prolonged lunchtime walk, and found them much easier to cope with once I’d stopped trying to fight my own reaction to them. Funnily enough, now that I’ve reached Stage 4 I’m finding the music is generating much less cognitive dissonance, perhaps because it’s already passed through the “event horizon” of ready recognition…
[…] on repeating loops of music, affording mere windows into something much bigger and grander (what i’ve previously described as “like trying to preserve a story in a single sentence”). Even at the outset of Stage […]
This album is definitely haunted me since i first heard it, nothing else has ever had close to this sort of impact on me.