THE CARETAKER: ARTICLE/INTERVIEW/PODCAST

...and speaking of perennial Kid Shirt favourites: there's an article on/interview w/ James Kirby (aka The Caretaker, The Stranger, V/Vm) by myself over on the FACT site.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here: James' new material is fucking fabulous and it's going to seriously turn some heads this year. My understanding is that a new CD/double-vinyl - "Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was" is due to drop fairly soon, but a recent mail hinted that he now has such a backlog of quality material that there may even be a series of vinyl releases staggered throughout the year. If you don't know what all the fuss is about, then check his site for downloads/streams - plus some of his marvellous back-catalogue is now reavailable for purchase.

I know the other guys at FACT are big fans of his work - in fact, Kiran suffixed the piece with a cry of "Support the artist!" and I can only echo that. As well as being a lovely guy, James has the potential to be a major musical playa in my opinion. Please buy his material (the vinyls are always beautifully mastered and the CDs lavishly packaged), not trawl the arse-end of bit-torrents looking for some scrappy-sounding old compressed-to-fuck mp3.

James also kindly agreed to put together an exclusive podcast to accompany the article - so if you're looking for freebies, then here's one (now bloody well go and buy something off him lol!). I was lucky enough to hear this a few weeks back and it's marvellous.

I hope you think so too.