I’m not even sure exactly what this is, to be honest. The Careless is apparently an ongoing fan project based on the music of The Caretaker, whom I’ve written about previously (and enjoyed immensely). It’s got the 8 1/2 hours of the same haunting vibe, mining memory and history even when it’s not really certain whose memory and history it’s mining. Does that matter? To what degree is it all shared anyway, part of some universal databank? I wonder sometimes, as the audience for a lot of this plunderphonics stuff is generally pretty young. What is there that makes it resonate so deeply?

Just as an aside, supporting the idea that younger people are being increasingly drawn back in time, older music now accounts for over 70 percent of all music consumption in the U.S. I mean, there have always been nostalgia trips. Fifties greaser nostalgia was big when I was in high school in the 1970s, for example. There are popular 80s and 90s nights regularly now in clubs and the attendees are often people born well after these songs were released. Who knows? Is it just “a thing?”

And how does that account for music like this, which is drawn from a time that predates my own existence on this planet?

This is what the website says:

What Was And Will Be is a seven-stage, eight and a half hour project by orange191 which is centered around the themes of how memories and experiences change throughout life. The project is inspired by both Everywhere at the End of Time and The Caretaker’s earlier albums, with more emphasis on interpretation as stated in the original Stage 1 upload. The album’s tracks represent memories which become either more distorted or less enthusiastic as time passes, until eventually reaching old age and retirement. From the second half of stage 5 onwards, the tracks have somewhat long sections of joy or clarity, as well as barren drones and sections of anxiety or dread.

It’s an ambitious project but curious. Is there a target audience? Or is it done merely for the sake of exploration? Why start at a time period/era that predates the existence of the audience? Anyway, too many questions.

Stage 1, at least, is still drawn from sounds that populated mass media when I was young. It was in film. It was in television re-runs. It wasn’t exactly new but it was still current. The production here fairly well imitates how these sounds and songs populate my memory. It’s distant and in places faded and distorted. It makes sense that it tickles some nerve endings in people in my demographic. But still, there are younger listeners. It’s a curious phenomenon, but maybe there is some kind of imprinting that’s passed down, becoming further faded and distorted generation by generation.

Random thoughts today and probably every bit as distant and distorted as the music playing. I’m not exactly in the present but it’s hard to tell if it’s the past or the future that’s occupied me this morning. I don’t know that it matters either way, but I’m not really quite here. Probably best just to focus on what needs to be done to pay the rent, right? That doesn’t require much thought. Let’s get that done and there is still head space to ponder this trip, which may or may not be a nostalgia thing.