James Leyland Kirby - In search of lost memories

More than a dozen different aliases, a now-defunct label and an immeasurable wealth of records, productions and free downloads make up the incredible calling card of James Leyland Kirby, English musician from Stockport and eccentric outsider of the electronic, ambient and noise scene of the last decade.

In the wake of the attention drawn by his monumental “Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was” and by the previous album “Persistent Repetition Of Phrases” released under the name The Caretaker, we caught up with him to talk about his peculiar approach to music and his multifaceted human and artistic experiences.

Your artistic history is very long and your output is monumental, but only recently have you managed to capture attention, thanks to the album under the name The Caretaker and to the latest “Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was“. In all likelihood, it's all down to the strange mysteries of critics, yet can you give a rational explanation as to why? Do you think something has changed in your way of making music in these last two records?

As far as The Caretaker is concerned, it's a project that started around 1997, whose first official release, in 1998, got a fairly good reception from the press, as did its subsequent releases. At some point in the early 2000s, I simply grew tired of trying to promote what I was doing, because it was absorbing so much energy that I felt I wanted to channel into new activities that would let me achieve what I wanted and make musically sensible projects. The fact that a lot of people have only taken renewed interest in my work over the last year or two is probably a testament to the work I've kept doing all along, since now every review or interview is based purely on the merit I'm given credit for.

These last two works were also the first after the closure of V/VM Test. Can you tell us about your label's experience and the reasons that led you to shut it down?

Ultimately, I had a huge amount of fun with V/Vm for a good while, even though I'm convinced that the strangeness of the overall result was influenced by the fact that many of those productions received no respect or consideration precisely because they came out on V/Vm Test. And it also seemed like a good moment to draw a line in the sand, so as to avoid dwelling on what I'd done up to that point and instead look towards what I could do, towards new challenges that involved greater risk and demanded more energy.

Alongside the label's activity, you've offered a lot of your work as a free download: what do you think of the current way music is consumed and distributed? And how do you explain the fact that the free download philosophy has taken hold especially in electronic and experimental circles?

I believe I offered my music at the best possible time, at a moment when most other musicians told me I was stupid for giving away so much music for free and that I was devaluing my work by doing so. Those same people are now scrambling in a desperate attempt to sell something or find anyone interested in their work. In all of this it's as if there's a kind of karma at play, whereby people are interested in what I do and support me precisely because for so many years I chose to give them my music for free.

Right now there's simply too much of everything out there for anyone to properly focus on anything; I think we're all a bit lost, always searching for new things, and once we've found them we still feel the need to discover more. Attention spans are very short, so much so that my own outlook on making music has changed. Now my main goal is to make it in the best way I'm capable of, I can't do more than that. If people are interested in and support my work, in a period like this that counts as a brilliant result, given that no one's holding a gun to their head to make them do it, and given that I very rarely bother promoting anything of mine.

As widespread as free downloads have become, I think a lot of the responsibility lies with the feeling many electronic or experimental artists have that they're not able to sell their work: that's why they give away so much music for free, perhaps because they too don't want to take financial risks in making something that could end up costing them money. I, on the other hand, love risk, I'm always just one album away from bankruptcy, but also very close to that all-night bar where I can drink for free…

In your boundless discography we find quite a variety of styles and genres, from ambient to dark-ambient, from noise to drone. Are there artists you consider decisive to your musical formation, or simply close to your own way of making music? None come to mind, since for me it's always been about doing the things that interested me, not the ones that might offer a return. For others, the problem is that too many people think first and foremost about sales and fame. For a lot of people it's a career, not a kind of experiment meant to prove what each of us is capable of. I can consider myself lucky, because I was never funded or backed for anything I did, so I've managed to survive solely thanks to the people who've shown interest in my work and wanted to buy the results of it.

Your prolificacy is probably unique, but almost all artists working in experimental territories put out copious amounts of material. Where does your expressive urgency come from? And, generally speaking, do you think the larger output of people who make this kind of music depends on the fact that it's "easier" to conceive and produce than, say, an album of "songs"?

Nowadays you can do so many things thanks to the tools available, provided you have the time to actually make them. Unfortunately a lot of people complain about not having time, but really, sometimes you just have to lock yourself in the studio and focus on creating. I can only make music when I'm inspired, whereas on certain days I wake up and realize it simply isn't going to happen. When I'm in the right frame of mind, I can really draw on my energy and inspiration.

Over the years I've already made a great many things, but right now I'm working even more intensely than usual to produce a larger amount of music than ever before: what actually comes out on my records is just the tip of the iceberg.

I think there's some truth to the idea that an album of songs takes longer to put together, although in the end everything's relative, because work is still work. An album that takes me two days can turn out better than one a band spent five years writing, because I believe that working intensely and quickly on a piece can channel your energies more effectively, even if the opposite can also be true.

Still on the subject of your extraordinary prolificacy, can you tell us how the experience of writing 365 tracks in a year came about, and how you experienced it?

I wanted to do something nobody else had done before. In the end I must have composed something like 600 tracks, and I myself have probably only listened back to around fifty of them: some were certainly good, while in others you could clearly hear the speed and the pressure of having to compose, but the point is that the whole operation actually got me into a daily work habit. In a way, it helped me get through that year (2006, ed.), during which I was ill and moved between several countries: that year I also did a tour of the United States, and for almost three months I couldn't walk normally after breaking my knee during a show in Belgium. It was a truly crazy year, but also a huge project carried out without any financial backing whatsoever, since earning any money during that period was practically impossible for me.

How do your compositions come about? What are your starting points, both technically and in terms of inspiration?

The ideal state of mind is waking up in the morning with your head free of all the daily bullshit that surrounds us, so you can spend your time fully immersed in the work alone. One of the reasons behind the many different styles and aliases under which I've produced music is that I compose differently each time, depending on my mood. For instance, I don't feel like making heartbreak piano music every single day: sometimes I just can't keep entering a certain emotional space day after day without paying the consequences for it, which is why it becomes essential to keep switching register depending on the inspiration.

Your live performances are worlds away from the image of a static laptop-artist detached from the audience. Where does the need to give your music a kind of "physical dimension" come from? What do you feel you're expressing this way?

For some time now I've been going back to focusing more on the sound, whereas for a long stretch I was thinking almost more about the performances themselves and about diving into the crowd at the venues where I played, in total opposition to those boring shows that just consist of watching someone standing behind a machine. The thing is, my instruments are the laptop and the studio where I compose, so it's difficult to play live with the same gear I use to make my music. That's not an excuse, of course, and that's exactly why I've gone back to designing something truly emotional — right now I'm working with a friend on some very personal visuals that can be projected alongside the music I play live.

To be honest, I don't really like playing live too much, even though I'll soon be playing a show in Madrid, and the day after I'll be DJing 80s music at a club with a bunch of Spanish girls I know. And honestly, I'd rather do that than play my music live, since right now it feels like something much more personal to me.

And what's your relationship with the laptop in general?

I like laptops. We're all going through this incredibly dangerous phase for computer-made music, because these days it seems like everyone is desperate to use these damn sad little controllers: as if they had to use them just because they've got a shiny Mac Powerbook with all its lights and extensions, when in the end all they do is the same old shit we've already heard a million times before they even start playing. So there's no emotion, no musician actually putting something of themselves into their music, and that's another reason why I'm not that keen on playing live. I hate seeing the same thing over and over again.

Has the constant development of ever more advanced and sophisticated software influenced the way you work and your music? Is it just a "technical" tool for you, or does it also affect the creative process itself?

I never really think about it seriously when I'm composing my music, I'm much more interested in the final result. I think a lot of people worry too much about new software and about showing that they're "here and now", whereas I tend to have a more overall view of the evolution of what I'm doing now in light of my past experiences. That way, I feel I can control what I'm capable of doing, and when I want to do it, far more than I ever could before.

On your record released as The Caretaker, many people noted a "gramophone-like" sound, which gives the work a rough vintage touch. Do you agree with that reading? If so, can you tell us how that particular sonic effect came about?

Quite simply, that sound comes from imperfect source material. I just think I've placed a certain emphasis on those imperfections on some records, using them as textures or tones.

"Persistent Repetition Of Phrases", both for its title and the music it contains, has been linked — by Simon Reynolds among others — to the philosophical concept of "hauntology" (coined by Derrida and referring to the persistence of revolutionary ideas). Is that something you feel is close to your idea of music? If so, can you explain how you conceive the idea of persistence as applied to your compositions?

People love to classify things and slap labels on them, but to me my records exist almost outside of any scene, and anyway it's not something I think about all that much.

My compositions are often centred on memory and on the processes of remembering. It was the same thing with the pop material under V/Vm, while my current compositions still carry out the same operation, focusing on the concept of time.

More generally, how much weight do you think the conceptual side can carry in music, particularly in electronic and (post-)industrial music?

Having a good concept can be important, but it's certainly not essential. Sometimes the music is so strong that people try to build concepts around it, but the work itself always remains the most important thing — all the better if the underlying idea adds something to it.

Speaking of concepts, one that comes up very often in your music is memory. Just think of titles like "Theoretically Pure Anterogarde Amnesia", "Deleted Scenes / Forgotten Dreams", "Memories Live Longer Than Dreams", which replay the eternal struggle in the human mind between imagination, memory and oblivion. Is music, for you, a means of bringing memories back to life, or of freezing them in an unchangeable past?

Our relationship with the past is always shifting, constantly changing; we remove the bad memories and focus on the positive ones. Time is even capable of altering reality itself. Much of The Caretaker's record is centred on rewriting the past, and that's exactly what's expressed by the name chosen for the label putting out my new work, "History Always Favours The Winners", since these days it's necessary to convince ourselves that we're somehow winners, if only to manage to get out of bed every day.

“Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was“ is perhaps your most accessible work, the one that more than any other has managed to make emotionally effective a kind of music that can often run into communicative limits. How did you experience the composition of this work? What feelings did you mean to express through it?

It was, first of all, a sincere album, tied to a completely mad period of my life, one that coincided with my move here to Berlin, where I was simply trying to survive despite having little interest in my work at the time. I had too much of everything and never enough: too much drinking (often free), too many girls, too many late nights, total chaos really. The strange thing is that most of the people around me at that time saw me out and about all the time, going hard at that kind of lifestyle. When I finally sent them copies of the record, nobody could believe it, since they had no idea when I'd actually made it, and to be honest, neither do I!

It was wasted time, a real rollercoaster ride that still hasn't ended, even if it's no longer taken to such extremes these days.

Finally, what can we expect from you in the future, and what do you expect from music?

I'm working on a lot of different things, together with a lot of people who are a wonderful source of inspiration for me. As far as I'm concerned, I just need to work hard and play a lot to find the balance I need so I don't fall off that tightrope I'm walking, stretched between the opposite extremes of working all the time or partying all the time.

I think I need to ride my luck a little longer to survive doing what I love, even if that's not so easy these days. But I like putting myself to the test, living day by day with absolutely no idea what might happen, all while I keep chasing that million-dollar smile in the clubs at night…

Thanks to Alberto Asquini for his invaluable collaboration

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