The Caretaker: Persistent repetition of phrases

I'm in the middle of the Dr. Mabuse film from 1922 (hey, it's long!) and I am also in the middle of The Road (which I was reading until 5 a.m. this morning) a novel by Cormac McCarthy that has gained quite a reputation, I think. Then I put on The Caretaker by chance. Strangely, Persistent Repetition of Phrases works as a soundtrack of both of these things. Twisted proto-noir from the 20's and a post-apocalyptic book about faith, love and desolation. The album conjures up McCarthy's ashen, desolate world as well as the spooky gambling rooms of Dr Mabuse.

I didn't know anything about the Caretaker until I *somehow* (don't ask) got hold of this album. It's some kind of ambient music, that's for sure. Spooky piano loops plod about somewhere in the background in the mix and, yes, the music evokes a bar room from the 20's. Scene1: a merry night of carousing lowlives has ended in a blood bath. Spectral horns join in on some tunes, to a great effect ("von restorff effect", "false memory syndrome"). I even think that James Kirby, who is the person behind the Caretaker, has used samples from the 20's and the 30's in his music. It works. It's strange to listen to songs with the sound of an old record being played somewhere in a barren room but still all the crackle lets you think that you have your ear pressed to the phonograph. Other tracks build upon a carpet of ambient sounds, quite like the stuff you often hear in this genre nowadays: icy, thick, floating sounds. (Still I don't have the impression that this is derivative.) On top of all this are a few threatening, cascading layers of crackle and echo, with an ever changing sound; from the sound of dripping water to rain to falling stones & wind & static noise from a radio - or, as I said, the breathing & toiling of a phonograph which has survived everything. There's a constant drifting hum of something ("there's always music in the air....").

Scene2: the winding corridors of Last year in Marienbad. The "theme" here is memory, too. "Unmasking alzeimer's", "Lacunar amnesia". Threads are picked up, associations drift for a while, then they are cut short, and another theme, close to something we've heard before, is played. Unsettling, disorienting music that takes you places, but only to throw you somewhere else the next minute.

References? Well lots of stuff from Angelo Badalamenti to the noisier moments of Library Tapes come to mind. Grouper, too. On the more experimental side; William Basinski, Philip Jeck. The Caretaker sense of spooky haunts me on the same level as The Conet project (of which I've written before) even though this is music intentionally created, notwithstanding the samples , crackle and all.

FYI: Many of the albums by The Caretaker are available for free! Go get! I'm listening to A Stairway to the stars now and it's great! "Cloudy, since you walked away" - a brassy tune including the most outright eerie vocals I've heard for awhile. Sounds like Frank Sinatra music warped in a cement mixer.