Leyland Kirby

A producer from Stockport, England who cranked out experimental releases at a seemingly inexhaustible rate, Leyland James Kirby was behind V/Vm, whose releases ranged from manipulations of pigs feeding to copyright-abusing manipulations of pop music, including a drastically misshapen version of Chris DeBurgh's "Lady in Red," which was featured as NME's single of the week in September 2000. In 2009, Kirby started the History Always Favours the Winners label, home to dozens of releases credited to Kirby aliases like the Caretaker and the Stranger, as well as the Leyland Kirby series Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was. He stepped out of his own orbit a bit in 2013, when he released Watching Dead Empires in Decay, an album of nightmarish ambience credited to the Stranger, for the Modern Love label. Throughout his years of activity, Kirby has used an assortment of additional aliases — including Billy Ray Cyrix, the Edgeley Musher, and the Notorious P.I.G. — for one-offs and short-term projects.