The Death of Rave - Embalmed

Leyland Kirby aka The Caretaker aka V/Vm is issuing on vinyl and CD a selection of tracks from his vast (I never actually made it all the way through) The Death of Rave online-only project of 2006: 200 tracks and nineteen hours of music "constructed from fragments of rave anthems, which were fired through Kirby’s usual arsenal of computer-assisted noise generators to result in a cacophony of mournful nostalgia and mischief" (FACT).  The release is due at the end of May on History Always Favours the Winners.

Snippet from Retromania on The Death of Rave:

"Collective memory was the subject of the Death of Rave project, inspired by Kirby's participation in the Manchester club scene of the late Eighties and early Nineties. "The energy in clubs at this time was amazing. Nobody knew what to expect next." But by the middle of the 2000s, Kirby felt that when he visited dance clubs "the energy and adventure seemed completely lost. I just wanted to reflect that. I took old rave tracks and stripped them down, removing all their life."  Spectral echoes of familiar rush-inducing riffs and anthemic refrains intermittently flicker through the dense smog of sound, but "the beat and drive have gone." Recalling the surge years of rave between 1988-1996, Kirby says "Everyone thought everything was possible on those long nights. The world was ours.  Now I think this generation is very disillusioned. They saw a glimpse of light on the dancefloors but that light has gone out and the future seems grim and predictable." "


K-Punk / Mark Fisher on The Death of Rave:

"Rave as revenant, reduced to reverberations. The Death of Rave can be heard as a supplement to the Burial album; another seance of the underground, another burned-out synaptic journey into rave's lost Eternal Now, another delving the dank dilapidation of its deserted spaces... The temporality of The Death of Rave is that of the flashback, the irruption of a lost future (from the near-past) into the present..."




Tracklist for The Death of Rave:
01 Monroes Stockport
02 Moggy & Wearden
03 Machete’s at The Banshee
04 Acid Alan, Haggis & Scott
05 Marple Libradome ‘91
06 Smithy & Dave the Rave
07 Big Eddie’s van – Bowlers car park
08 XR2 mk1 Sale Waterpark