I know that at least a few of my regular readers listen to John Peel’s programmes on Radio One, so may be familiar with the work of The Caretaker. It’s extremely hard to describe – an ethereal, bewitching, slightly spooky and disturbing sound created from distortion and remodelling of old 20s and 30s ballroom and dancehall music. The closest to anything like this I have ever heard before is some of Vangelis’ music for Bladerunner, or Angelo Badalamenti’s music for David Lynch – I say “closest”, but neither are really that close at all, but you might begin to guess the atmosphere that is created. John Peel likened it to being stood in the rain outside a thirties speakeasy.
Olli Siebelt in his BBC review describes it much more succinctly than I could, and the BBC kindly provide a couple of RealAudio samples for you to listen to.
Admittedly, a whole 50 minutes of it may not be to everyone’s taste, but I don’t think that there are many who could resist “Cloudy Since You Went Away” thrown into an evening’s listening. And “Consigned to a Yesterday” should put the spooks on just about anyone.
separating the wanted from the unwanted