No, no, it’s not another list. It’s a mixtape, the finest in innovative, future-forward sounds assembled by your pals at Motherboard. You get one track a day from now until the end of the year, and then it all comes together into the best document of the future of music seen from the year 2011 on the internet.This was the year of Leyland James Kirby, at least as much as a maker of rather weird, not so much difficult as a profoundly different ambient music can have a spotlight year. Kirby released three records under his own name — all sublime in their own right — and one as the Caretaker. “I Feel As If I Might Be Vanishing” is from the Caretaker album, An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, and its waves of fuzzy, crackly melody digested into soft reverby waves are perfect in a way, but also gently terrifying. They’re memories, or the ghosts of memories rather, old ballroom records effected and manipulated by Kirby just so — lingering traces of things moved on caught in the process of haunting by the Caretaker and pressed to record. There’s craftsmanship at work, of course, but his handiwork feels more like guiding than changing.
.02 The Caretaker, “I Feel As If I Might Be Vanishing”
h4. Connections: