Leyland Kirby, Sadly, The Future is No Longer What it Was (3 CD History Always Favours the Winners)

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This work was almost universally celebrated as an artistic triumph and the zenith of its genre upon its release.

But for its creator, it came out of reaching the nadir of his existence. After a tough year, James Leyland Kirby set about to create something of ”substance”, something personal as he writes. Which would explain the choice to publish under his own name, or two-thirds of it, at least. (Is the present so toxic that it is eroding away our personalities, one name at a time?) A long career as V/Vm had run its course and under the monicker The Caretaker he had changed direction and was received enthusiastically in quarters formerly immune to the charms of his work.

Avoiding any au courant terminology, as well as the question of whether or not Kirby was ahead of a curve many others were also pursuing, The Caretaker´s releases spoke of optimism betrayed by living proof, the individual left to his own devices, digital social networks turning us into voyeurs, not participants. Its slow pace – perhaps also its exended length – are an antidote to our impatient mouse-clicking. All this information, but alas no Pierian spring of wisdom from which to drink.

Sadly, The Future is No Longer What it Was, spread over three compact discs, is a requiem for a world whose memories, very recent ones at that, are only reminders of broken promises and unfulfilled dreams and ambitions. Like HAL the computer powering down while singing ”Bicycle Built for Two”, we are in danger of infantilizing and ultimately deactivating ourselves. Like an audio Schopenhauer declaring the decline of the West, Kirby, dangerously close to romanticizing our collective failure, still has the power and the will to embark on such an enormous, and open-ended project. Turning pessimism into art is of course one way of refusing to succumb to it.

It took him a year to complete. The outstanding paintings by his friend Ivan Seal gracing the six sides of the sleeves and titles like ”The Sound of Music Vanishing” and ”When Did Our Dreams and Futures Drift So Far Apart?” maintain the mood whichever way you look.

And it is utterly beguiling. Especially when Kirby sits along at his piano and pounds out a dirge like ”Don´t Sleep I´m Not What I Seem, I´m a Very Quiet Storm”, near the beginning of disc two. The swirling eddies he magically creates out of old records are astonishing in their depth and power to move, though they remain impossible to fully grasp either physically or mentally. Stygian gloom and Scotch mist.

The dying carnival calliope of one of the shorter tracks, ”Days in the Wilderness”, may not be the best, but it is surely the most representative track. The circus has left town, all that´s left now is the daily bread. ”And At Dawn Armed With Glowing Patience, We Will Enter the Cities of Glory (Stripped)” ends disc two with the all the plaintiveness of the last dance at the Last Chance Saloon. Beautiful in a fin-de-siècle kind of way.

And even though he probably has another meaning in mind with ”Not Even Nostalgia is As Good As It Used to Be” on disc three, the tinkling of wind chimes reflect a little light into the existential gloom.

The title track is a full twenty minutes long. Exquisitely distorted guitar leads into a long and sorrowful electronic lament, stepping deeper and deeper into the abyss, fleeing perhaps the above-mentioned glimmer of hope? The entire piece slightly oversaturates the recording equipment and serves, perhaps, as a symbol of the limits of technology, the futility of perfectly rendered sound. It abrades without losing any of its beauty.

By giving vent to his despondency, Kirby has created honest and therefore attractive work. To which the listener responds with genuine warmth. Like Leonard Cohen claims, "there is a crack in everything. That´s how the light gets in."

http://www.brainwashed.com/vvm/haftw