The Caretaker — Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom

VVM test records, a label that requires a certain sense of humour and of course at least a passing interest in the genre of dark ambient/noise. This debut release by the Caretaker is a quite unique blend of the said style and old 1920s/30s ballroom music. VVM pride themselves on rehashing old music into a new and grotesque form, but for much of this overdriven, reverb soaked oddity they have in fact created a rather fascinating and highly enjoyable record.

As stated it’s mostly based around highly distorted/slowed down/reverbed/mulched ballroom music with a couple of pure noise tracks thrown in for good measure. The effect of distorting these old songs is rather disorientating and turns them into eerie dark ambient nightmare soundtracks. Perhaps something you would expect to hear on a David lynch or Cronenberg film.
There are a lot of tracks, twenty seven in total, but the album flows surprisingly well. It really is a unique sound, and one that can be quite disturbing. I couldn’t tell you what the ballroom songs the caretaker uses are called as he has renamed all the songs himself.

The first track that really stands out is track four Haunting Me. This is the first vocal track, and the voice of the crooner in question takes on a bizarre cabaret drone due to the distortion, adding to the surreal quality of the song. The actual words can’t be distinguished. Although this all may sound a bit talentless and pretentious, in fact the songs are in fact quite complex and layered. There are a hell of a lot of strange effects, drones, and other subtle touches that make up the songs, the caretaker hasn’t just run songs through a filter and burned them to CD.
Some parts of songs are backwards and then seamlessly flip round again revealing the tune, I would almost describe the sound as intoxicating, the way the songs just float like an ether through your head. Other stand out tracks include Dream Waltz, The bizarre In the Dark and the frankly terrifying From out of nowhere, on which looped vocals and ghostly choral and ambient effects pan around like a demented fairground ride. You and the night is another creepy song where the song is doubled with the vocals being at different pitches creating a very odd effect like the crooner is being accompanied by a small child. The madness only increases as the big band bursts into life playing all bent and distorted brass.
I think the albums best moments come when the ambient 20s/30 music drifts in after a wave of industrial noise, it’s rather comical but also rather horrific if that makes sense.

All in all, I love this album, it’s one of the most obscure sounding and there is very little else like this around. It’s an acquired taste obviously, but if you like dark ambient and industrial and want a unique listening experience then The Haunted Ballroom is just the trick.