An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

This is wild… not something I ever imagined even existed. I am completely fascinated by this. I started listening to this before I knew what it was and after a couple of songs I started to feel eerily like I was sitting in the bar in The Shining. So it was a real surprise when I had a chance to look at the Wikipedia entry and read that The Caretaker Project took inspiration from a number of sources including The Shining. As for the album, what an incredible concept! I loved listening to this. Sure, it isn’t the normal thing one would listen to by any stretch, and I have no idea if it is something I’ll revisit, but I love that this exists.

As a survivor of listening to everywhere at the end of time, this was light work. 45 minutes of music that's easy to listen to on the surface but sad conceptually instead of 6 hours of noises that make me want to kill myself. While this is more accessible, though, I do think that the long form version is far more clear in its intent. Like by the end of that I really felt like I had gone through 6 stages of memory loss and could tease out the metaphor much easier than this. However, just as a proof of concept this was pretty good. Also didn't know that Libet's delay was what the tik tok sound came from.

Impression based on nothing more than the title + album cover: whatever this is, it wants everyone to know it is ARTSY. Whenever I see stuff like this I just assume it's that brand of drawn out post-rock a la Mono, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Boris, etc etc. This picture just looks like something droning. Might be droning post-rock, might be some kind of "ambient soundscape" affair too. But I'm guessing post-rock. I wouldn't be surprised if I load spotify and the songs are called "I", "II", "III" etc. Ok so it has real song titles. Hifalutin', artsy nonsense, but at least they're not given roman numerals or Latin song titles. Ok, it's.... lo-fi, fake phonograph crackle, oldies "classical" type music? Minimalist approach, the songs just kinda abruptly end. It feels like the audio equivalent of a found-footage movie. Maybe it was authentically recorded using gear from the 1920s, maybe the crackle was added later on, I dunno. Overall I'm not really feeling it. I think I know what it's trying to do, but it needs more context, or further immersion. It'd work as the soundtrack to a survival horror video game or something? But as a standalone listen, eh. 3/5 just because I have no clue how to rate it. update: on now reading the wiki article, I'm actually pretty happy with how much of this I guessed, including the intent behind the project. I WAS way off on the post-rock idea, but also... maybe kinda not? I feel like there's probably overlap in the fandoms here. Either way, I'm happy with my ability to judge. The wiki makes a few interesting notes on listening that makes me think I might need to listen again tonight with my headphones in. It's probably the sort of thing I could go deep on if I hit the medicinal cannabis this evening, but I promised myself I wouldn't this week. update UPDATE: I'm now about halfway through the album and the crackle has mostly faded, and even without being stoned (it IS 4:06am after all) I have been kinda swept up in this. I dunno what to say. On paper, this is the sort of shit I sneer at. But here we are. Will definitely save for the weekend and give it a "real" listen.

Soothing, yet jarring, wistful and hazy, this benefits very much from understanding the vision it was made with, and how very well it executed it. Awesome

The concept for this album is fascinating. What I'm really not sure what I think about is the execution of the concept. I've never heard an album before where I was less sure of what the artist was actually doing. In general, it sounds like he's just put a microphone up at some distance from a speaker playing music on vinyl. About halfway through the album, he has some shorter loops and has things moving between the left and right channels, which makes what he is doing a bit more obvious, but for the most part his role is very mysterious. In some ways, it's this question about what the artist is doing that makes this work. We are transported through unknown means into a hazy past that may never have existed for us. We experience the work of the artist's hand, but the hand itself is never visible. In some ways, I think this is meant to mimic the unstuck timelessness of Alzheimer's, since AD patients and their connection to music from their pasts were the inspiration for this album. It works. I don't know how or why, or even what works, but it works 4/5

This one floored me a little – on the outset, I was wondering how I was going to make it through a full 45 minutes of old-timey piano, but as I let this one seep into my consciousness it began to grow on me. It's been a while since an LP has conjured a whole new set of emotions while listening, but this album made me feel an enjoyable sense of dread, like my fate had been decided and I was calmly awaiting my doom with a peaceful sense of acceptance. I can see people here absolutely hating this album, but to me, this is what the project is about, finding completely new musical experiences that I wouldn't have made myself listen to otherwise – purgatory's waiting room music wasn't on my bingo card (or something I would have even thought I'd enjoy), but I'm glad you added this to the list and made me listen to it!

Very interesting concept of this 'odd-one-out' album. It was very calming, but also oddly terrifying in some way Tip: listen it on stereo

I'd really like this without the crackling white noise.

Intrigued by the description of this but strongly tempted to call utter BS on the actual product. It's really pretty much just the music, innit? Modified mostly by a lot of scratch and hiss, some reverb and delay, and repetition. At its best generating a vague and maudlin ambiance, reminiscent perhaps of what is playing at dwindling volume in the back of Jack Torrance's mind as he freezes to death in the hedge labyrinth. The more starkly modified I found less tolerable. Narrowly scrapes better than two stars by virtue of sheer barefaced audacity and because his Wikipedia bio sounds like a fictional artist from a William Gibson novel.

Good warm up for the real thing

I found this pretty boring to be honest. In general I'm just not a fan of ambient. 2 stars.

Ambient, dance band, easy listening, plunderphonics, conceptual art, tone poem. Lamentable la imitación de grabación antigua. No me ha gustado nada. Un 1.