James Leyland Kirby — better known for his haunting work as The Caretaker — ventures into darker territory with 'Bleaklow,' an album that trades his usual deteriorating ballroom memories for the windswept desolation of Northern England's moorlands. This isn't the interior decay of abandoned hotels that The Caretaker explores, but rather the outer spaces where humans can only visit, terrains that exist beyond habitation. The opening track 'Something to Do with Death' sets the tone immediately with unstable, fizzing drones punctuated by pained, high-pitched howls that transmit waves of genuine dread. Throughout its eleven tracks, Kirby masterfully manipulates sound into intimidating monstrosities — formidable sonics and fearsome drones that map out a sonic cartography of the Eerie North West, from the titular Bleaklow plateau to the subterranean cave systems and crags that dot these lonely landscapes.

What makes 'Bleaklow' such a unique jewel in Kirby's extensive catalogue is its complete departure from his sample-based turntable work, instead crafting original dark ambient compositions that feel simultaneously deeply unsettling and oddly comforting. Tracks like 'Indefinite Ridge' create that destabilizing sound that seems to pull you into the moorland itself, while 'Kirkbymoorside' and 'Ominous Sunset' build layers of industrial ambience that feel both majestic and oppressively lugubre. The 2014 remastered edition — with Matt Colton's pristine vinyl mastering and Ivan Seal's new artwork — only emphasizes the album's power, revealing new depths in these already cavernous soundscapes. As critic Mark Fisher noted, Kirby should be understood more as an artist than merely a musician, and 'Bleaklow' stands as testament to this vision — a work that shames the conceptual poverty of much contemporary art through its commitment to place, atmosphere, and the haunting presence of landscapes that remember their dead.