Tiny Gradations of Loss

Tweet Do you want to really kill the buzz at the next house party you go to? Sure ya do.

Just wait until the party iPod gets to that stoopid bit in the Florence and the Machine song where she's screaming "RAWWLORRRADOGDAYRAAAAAAA" and the kitchen is an orgy of sweaty dickheads hi-fiving, then slyly press play on your cued-up secret weapon - a plangent concept album about Alzheimer's disease.

MP3: The Caretaker-All you are going to want to do is get back there

"Way to kill the buzz Broseph. What is this creepy shit anyway?", says the only person besides you in the kitchen, as tuborg cans spirit silently away, and dust motes fill the air. "It's the Caretaker", you tell him, as the Stoneybatter garden stretches through soft night towards a pier lit by swaying electric bulbs, past hundreds of shadowy figures, smoking soldiers, dancing couples, and the green light at the end of Gatsby's dock.

"The Caretaker is Jack Nichols...no wait, it's the German avant garde composer Leyland Kirby. He made a series of albums where he heavily treats old music samples to evoke memory corrosion and decay. A subject of great mystery and melancholy that fascinates him to the point of, well the point of distraction. You see, the last thing the brain of an elderly person with advanced dementia responds to is said to be music."

"Broseph, what was this music aga...what's his na...."

"The Caretaker is you aged 80 and aged 8 at the same time, here, playing together"

"Where are we?"

"Your back gar...standing still in the nettles with your twin brother, stung knees, holding glass jars, still as sentr..."

"We're catching bees..."

"Yes, be..."

MP3: The Caretaker-A relationship with the sublime