Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom
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Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom
''Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom'' is the debut studio album by the Caretaker, an alias of musician Leyland Kirby. Released in 1999, it consists of an influence from the horror film '' The Shining'', manipulating songs from the 1920s to resemble the film's music. It differed from Kirby's earlier works in that it did not manipulate pop songs to create noise albums, as he did under the V/Vm alias. It rather slowed down big band records to create a hauntological atmosphere, as he did on the Caretaker's early albums. However, the packaging was the same as other V/Vm releases. The album was met with positivity from music critics, who praised its hauntological themes. Background In the late 1990s, English musician Leyland Kirby started recording as V/Vm, releasing noise albums sampled from pop songs. Controversial aspects, such as copyright concerns and recordings of pigs feeding, were a prominent part of the alias. The alias was prolific, releasing in vinyl and CD on l ...
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The Caretaker (musician)
The Caretaker was a long-running project by English ambient musician Leyland James Kirby (born 9 May 1974). His work as the Caretaker is characterized as exploring memory and its gradual deterioration, nostalgia, and melancholia. The project was inspired by the haunted ballroom scene in the 1980 film '' The Shining''. His first several releases comprised treated and manipulated samples of 1930s ballroom pop recordings. The Caretaker's works have received critical acclaim in publications such as ''The Wire,'' ''The New York Times'', and BBC Music. History 1999–2003: Haunted Ballroom trilogy Simon Reynolds refers to the Caretaker's first three releases as "the haunted ballroom trilogy", spanning 1999-2003: ''Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom'', ''A Stairway to the Stars'', ''We'll All Go Riding on a Rainbow''. Jon Fletcher described the sound as "instantly recognisable musical identity of British tea-room pop (dance-band and swing music from the 1920s, 1930s ...
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Sampling (music)
In sound and music, sampling is the reuse of a portion (or sample) of a sound recording in another recording. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, sounds or entire bars of music, and may be layered, equalized, sped up or slowed down, repitched, looped, or otherwise manipulated. They are usually integrated using hardware ( samplers) or software such as digital audio workstations. A process similar to sampling originated in the 1940s with '' musique concrète'', experimental music created by splicing and looping tape. The mid-20th century saw the introduction of keyboard instruments that played sounds recorded on tape, such as the Mellotron. The term ''sampling'' was coined in the late 1970s by the creators of the Fairlight CMI, a synthesizer with the ability to record and play back short sounds. As technology improved, cheaper standalone samplers with more memory emerged, such as the E-mu Emulator, Akai S950 and Akai MPC. Sampling is a foundation of ...
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Invasion Of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact. The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. The invasion is also known in Poland as the September campaign ( pl, kampania wrześniowa) or 1939 defensive war ( pl, wojna obronna 1939 roku, links=no) and known in Germany as the Poland campaign (german: Überfall auf Polen, Polenfeldzug). German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. Slovak military forces ad ...
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St Luke Passion, BWV 246
The ''St Luke Passion'' (german: Lukas-Passion), BWV 246, is a Passion setting formerly attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. It is included in the BWV catalog under the number 246. Now it appears in the catalogues under the heading apocryphal or anonymous. History A surviving manuscript of the ''St Luke Passion'' from about 1730 is partly in Bach's hand, though scholars believe that the music is certainly not his own. The music was later thought to have been composed by Johann Melchior Molter, but that was proven false because if Molter composed the music, then the manuscript would date to later than 1730. Presumably Bach performed it, or intended to perform it, in Leipzig. C. P. E. Bach and Agricola may have mistaken it for a work of Bach's and thus included it in their census. Of course, given his delight in exhaustive cycles, Bach should have composed a ''St Luke Passion''. Apparently J. S. Bach took the anonymous ''St Luke Passion'' and arranged it for four voices, chorus, o ...
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Aria
In music, an aria (Italian: ; plural: ''arie'' , or ''arias'' in common usage, diminutive form arietta , plural ariette, or in English simply air) is a self-contained piece for one voice, with or without instrumental or orchestral accompaniment, normally part of a larger work. The typical context for arias is opera, but vocal arias also feature in oratorios and cantatas, or they can be stand-alone concert arias. The term was originally used to refer to any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. Etymology The Italian term ''aria'', which derives from the Greek ἀήρ and Latin ''aer'' (air), first appeared in relation to music in the 14th century when it simply signified a manner or style of singing or playing. By the end of the 16th century, the term 'aria' refers to an instrumental form (cf. Santino Garsi da Parma lute works, 'Aria del Gran Duca'). By the early 16th century it was in common use as meaning a simple setting of strophic poetry; me ...
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Dementia
Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affects a person's ability to function and carry out everyday activities. Aside from memory impairment and a disruption in thought patterns, the most common symptoms include emotional problems, difficulties with language, and decreased motivation. The symptoms may be described as occurring in a continuum over several stages. Consciousness is not affected. Dementia ultimately has a significant effect on the individual, caregivers, and on social relationships in general. A diagnosis of dementia requires the observation of a change from a person's usual mental functioning, and a greater cognitive decline than what is caused by normal aging. Several diseases and injuries to the brain, such as a stroke, can give rise to dementia. However, th ...
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Everywhere At The End Of Time
''Everywhere at the End of Time'' is the eleventh and final recording by the Caretaker, an alias of English electronic musician Leyland Kirby. Released between 2016 and 2019, its six studio albums use degrading loops of sampled ballroom music to portray the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Inspired by the success of ''An Empty Bliss Beyond This World'' (2011), Kirby produced ''Everywhere'' as his final major work under the alias. The albums were produced in Krakow and released over six-month periods to "give a sense of time passing", with abstract album covers by his friend Ivan Seal. The series drew comparisons to the works of composer William Basinski and electronic musician Burial, while the later stages were influenced by avant-gardist composer John Cage. The series comprises six hours of music, portraying a range of emotions and characterised by noise throughout. Although the first three stages are similar to ''An Empty Bliss,'' the last three depart from Kirby's ea ...
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Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term memory, remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include primary progressive aphasia, problems with language, Orientation (mental), disorientation (including easily getting lost), mood swings, loss of motivation, self-neglect, and challenging behaviour, behavioral issues. As a person's condition declines, they often withdraw from family and society. Gradually, bodily functions are lost, ultimately leading to death. Although the speed of progression can vary, the typical life expectancy following diagnosis is three to nine years. The cause of Alzheimer's disease is poorly understood. There are many environmental and genetic risk factors associated with its development. The strongest genetic risk factor is from an alle ...
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An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
''An Empty Bliss Beyond This World'' is the ninth studio album by the Caretaker, an ambient music project of English musician Leyland Kirby, released on 1 June 2011 through History Always Favours the Winners. The record is based on a study regarding people with Alzheimer's disease being able to remember music they listened to when they were younger, as well as where they were and how they felt listening to it. The album samples pre-World War II ballroom records Kirby bought in Brooklyn in December 2010. This theme of Alzheimer's in music would be greatly expanded upon through 2016 to 2019 through Kirby's final series of albums as The Caretaker, ''Everywhere at the End of Time''. ''An Empty Bliss Beyond This World'' was the Caretaker's breakthrough album, garnering critical acclaim upon its release and earning several year-end accolades. ''Pitchfork'' has called it the 75th best album of the first half of the 2010s as well as the 14th best ambient album of all time. Concept ''A ...
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Anterograde Amnesia
In neurology, anterograde amnesia is the inability to create new memories after the event that caused amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. This is in contrast to retrograde amnesia, where memories created prior to the event are lost while new memories can still be created. Both can occur together in the same patient. To a large degree, anterograde amnesia remains a mysterious ailment because the precise mechanism of storing memories is not yet well understood, although it is known that the regions of the brain involved are certain sites in the temporal cortex, especially in the hippocampus and nearby subcortical regions. Signs and symptoms People with anterograde amnesic syndromes may present with widely varying degrees of forgetfulness. Some with severe cases have a combined form of anterograde and retrograde amnesia, sometimes called global amnesia. In the case of drug-i ...
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Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia
''Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia'' is the fourth studio album by the Caretaker, an alias of musician Leyland Kirby. Released in 2005, it abandoned the haunted ballroom aesthetic of the previous albums and explored memory loss. Divided into six CDs, it consists of seventy-two drone tracks combined to create a five-hour long release. It was compared by several critics to other musicians, including Merzbow, Boards of Canada, and Krzysztof Penderecki. The liner notes for ''Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia'' were written by Mark Fisher. The blogger, who referenced the record on his book ''Ghosts of My Life'' (2014), committed suicide in 2017, for which Kirby created '' Take Care. It's a Desert Out There...''. ''Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia'' was met with general praise from music critics, who felt it improved on the Caretaker's style. However, some of the tracks were criticized for their production. The album has since been considered a precursor to the Caretak ...
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Ballroom
A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially historic mansions and palaces, contain one or more ballrooms. In other large houses, a large room such as the main drawing room, long gallery, or hall may double as a ballroom, but a good ballroom should have the right type of flooring, such as hardwood flooring or stone flooring (usually marble or stone). In later times the term ballroom has been used to describe nightclubs where customers dance, the Top Rank Suites in the United Kingdom for example were also often referred to as ballrooms. The phrase "having a ball" has grown to encompass many events where person(s) are having fun, not just dancing. Ballrooms are generally quite large, and may have ceilings higher than other rooms in the same building. The large amount of space for dancing, as well ...
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