Browse by Label: HISTORY ALWAYS FAVOURS THE WINNERS (UK)

Artist:	KIRBY, LEYLAND
Title:	Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was
Label:	HISTORY ALWAYS FAVOURS THE WINNERS (UK)
Format:	3CD
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	HAFTW 001CD

These pieces are the first released by The Caretaker's James Kirby under his own name and are the result of an intense period of production aimed at encapsulating a deep feeling of loss and alienation. What started as a concept for a simple single album soon turned into a double-album, then into a double double-album before finally ending up as a triple-double- vinyl album and triple CD soundtrack. As James Leyland Kirby himself describes it: "Here we stand, 20 years on from the first CD, and our optimism has gradually been eroded away collectively. "Tomorrow's World" never came. We are lost and isolated, many of us living our lives through social networks as we try to make sense of it all, becoming voyeurs, not active participants. Documenting everything. No mystery. Everything laid bare for all to see." Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was is the soundtrack to a world in decline, the heroism of modern life, a document of loss, an essay in gloom, delivered with a brutally honest appreciation of the pitiful truth. Time-worn, ambient drone-hauntology.

Artist:	CARETAKER, THE
Title:	Persistent Repetition Of Phrases
Label:	HISTORY ALWAYS FAVOURS THE WINNERS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.50
Catalog #:	HAFTW 003CD

Having already been chosen as one of The Wire magazine's top 10 albums of 2008, as well as featuring on numerous "end-of year" charts, The Caretaker's highly-acclaimed Persistent Repetition Of Phrases is finally made available on CD again -- this time on The Caretaker's own History Always Favours The Winners label. James Kirby's work as The Caretaker has always dealt with the suggestion of haunted memory and the obscuring of temporal motion, and this album makes that more explicit than ever, with titles that reference amnesia, Alzheimer's, past life regression and other such memory misfires and short circuits. Musically, this album might be compared to Philip Jeck's manipulated vinyl tracts, featuring similarly oceanic swells of crackle and dust, with faded pianos or big band sounds wafting wraith-like across the mix. After conjuring the sinister atmospherics of The Shining with his debut album Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom, The Caretaker has been chasing this idea of sound leaving its indelible mark on a space and time, so consequently these creepy, semi-dissolved musical passages sound no more tangible than shadows, and the album for the most part comes across as some sort of séance held via wax cylinder.

Artist:	CARETAKER, THE
Title:	An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
Label:	HISTORY ALWAYS FAVOURS THE WINNERS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	HAFTW 008CD

This is the second album from James Leyland Kirby's alias The Caretaker, following up 2008's Persistent Repetition Of Phrases (HAFTW 003CD). Leading medical research explains how Alzheimer's patients who endure increasing memory loss can still recall songs from their distant past. The prefrontal cortex is among the last brain regions to atrophy. With this in mind, The Caretaker once again recalls fifteen occasions where memories were locked in a timeless and haunting loop. The Caretaker is the work of James Leyland Kirby, also sometimes known as Leyland Kirby, The Stranger and V/VM. Mastered at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering. Artwork features another specially commissioned painting by Ivan Seal.

Artist:	KIRBY, LEYLAND
Title:	Intrigue & Stuff Vol.1
Label:	HISTORY ALWAYS FAVOURS THE WINNERS (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	HAFTW 009LP

James Leyland Kirby (aka The Caretaker) presents the first of a set of four limited edition vinyl pressings. Six tracks wide, 30 minutes long, these are all previously-unreleased retro-futurist recordings. What then is Intrigue & Stuff? Is it a comment by the late great Martin Hannett when describing Tony Wilson's Factory? "There's an awful lot of incest that goes on," mused Hannett. "Intrigue and stuff." The biggest clue could be found in one of the track titles: "Live For The Future, Long For The Past," a track which itself has been used to soundtrack the final coda to a BBC series entitled Everything And Nothing, a two-part documentary which dealt with two of the deepest questions there are -- what is everything, and what is nothing? We can confirm that Intrigue & Stuff will be delivered in four parts spread across four 12" pressings. Vinyl cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. 700 copies only. Last copies, now deleted.

Artist:	KIRBY, LEYLAND
Title:	Eager To Tear Apart The Stars
Label:	HISTORY ALWAYS FAVOURS THE WINNERS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	HAFTW 010CD

James Leyland Kirby is a prolific artist with a remarkably long and varied career working inside, outside and beyond the electronic underground. From his roots as one-half of renowned audio pranksters and sonic agitators V/VM, to his critically-acclaimed work as The Caretaker and, most recently, Leyland Kirby -- he's always attracted the attention of an often bewildered audience, although his stature and position as serious auteur has somehow grown exponentially with every year that has gone by since his beginnings in rainy Edgeley back in the mid-'90s. Eager To Tear Apart The Stars is his follow-up proper to the now-classic Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was trilogy of LPs, which were released in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim. Since then, he's quietly ushered in the demented white label vinyl series Intrigue & Stuff, and released another album as The Caretaker, An Empty Bliss Beyond This World. Eager To Tear Apart The Stars echoes and refracts the maverick solo synth classics of Roedelius and Harold Budd, but with a temporal warping and sense of decayed decadence individual to Kirby's oeuvre. There's an ostensible sadness to these six pieces, but of a life-affirming and subtly ambiguous kind, evoking almost indecipherably mixed emotions of a rare and enigmatic variety which continue to haunt long after the record has come to a close. The album artwork features another specially-commissioned painting by Ivan Seal. Housed in a digipak CD. Mastered and cut at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering.

Artist:	CARETAKER, THE
Title:	Patience (After Sebald)
Label:	HISTORY ALWAYS FAVOURS THE WINNERS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.50
Catalog #:	HAFTW 013CD

James Leyland Kirby returns in 2012 with his long-in-the-making soundtrack to Grant Gee's film about W.G. Sebald. Patience (After Sebald) is a multi-layered film essay on landscape, art, history, life and loss by the acclaimed documentary film-maker Grant Gee. It is an exploration of the work and influence of German writer W.G. Sebald (1944-2001), told via a long walk through coastal East Anglia tracking his most famous book The Rings Of Saturn (1995). The book mixes history, travelogue, memoir, meditation, fiction and images to explore the personal, public and often overlooked histories of Suffolk. In 2009, Grant approached The Caretaker to work on a soundtrack for this work and he sourced out-of-copyright Franz Schubert works from 1927 including the famous work "Winterreise." The soundtrack has been pieced together using snippets and fragments of this source material. The CD album artwork features another specially-commissioned painting by Ivan Seal, and comes in a gatefold digifile sleeve. Mastered and cut at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering.

Artist:	CARETAKER, THE
Title:	Patience (After Sebald)
Label:	HISTORY ALWAYS FAVOURS THE WINNERS (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	HAFTW 013LP

James Leyland Kirby returns in 2012 with his long-in-the-making soundtrack to Grant Gee's film about W.G. Sebald. Patience (After Sebald) is a multi-layered film essay on landscape, art, history, life and loss by the acclaimed documentary film-maker Grant Gee. It is an exploration of the work and influence of German writer W.G. Sebald (1944-2001), told via a long walk through coastal East Anglia tracking his most famous book The Rings Of Saturn (1995). The book mixes history, travelogue, memoir, meditation, fiction and images to explore the personal, public and often overlooked histories of Suffolk. In 2009, Grant approached The Caretaker to work on a soundtrack for this work and he sourced out-of-copyright Franz Schubert works from 1927 including the famous work "Winterreise." The soundtrack has been pieced together using snippets and fragments of this source material. The album artwork features another specially-commissioned painting by Ivan Seal. Mastered and cut at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering. Limited edition of 700 copies.

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