Everywhere at the End of Time

Everywhere at the End of Time
A blank canvas with blue tape forming the shape of a square on it, resting at a lime gradient horizon. Cover art for the last release of the series, Stage 6.
Recording by the Caretaker
Genre	Ambient avant-garde big band choral dark ambient drone electronic experimental hauntology jazz modern classical noise plunderphonics
Length	390:32
Label	History Always Favours the Winners
Producer	James Leyland Kirby
the Caretaker chronology
Patience (After Sebald) (2012) Everywhere at the End of Time (2016-2019) Everywhere, an Empty Bliss (2019)

Everywhere at the End of Time is a series of albums, from the eleventh to seventeenth studio albums, by the Caretaker, an alias of English electronic musician James Leyland Kirby exploring memory. Released from 2016 to 2019 by his own self-operated record label History Always Favours The Winners, the series came from Kirby feeling a need to expand the themes of Alzheimer's disease that his 2011 album An Empty Bliss Beyond This World had covered, since it was successful. The series mainly consists of big band jazz records that slowly deteriorate, in melodical coherence, as each album progresses, in order to produce a musical depiction of dementia. Eventually, the series climaxes on its last five minutes by presenting a clear choral song and, subsequently, a minute of silence, which are hypothesized to be representations of the terminal lucidity phenomenon and the patient's death, respectively.

The series features Kirby turning the Caretaker alias itself into a character by "giving the project dementia," ending with the retirement and canonical death of the pseudonym on 2019, when Stage 6 of the series and its accompanying compilation album Everywhere, an Empty Bliss were released. The series departs itself from previous releases by the Caretaker on its style, as previous albums mainly consisted on repeated melodies, whereas the last three albums of the series are more similar to noise music. The album covers are oil paintings created by Leyland Kirby's long-time friend Ivan Seal, and have been regarded by critics and by Kirby as integral to the record, due to their abstract style.

The individual albums of Everywhere at the End of Time were released six months apart from each other, from the release of Stage 1 in September 2016 to the release of Stage 6 in March 2019, to give a sense of time passing between the stages of the record. While Kirby's statement that the Caretaker project had "been given dementia" was confusing to some websites, the musician argued that this was not intentional. The series was met with a generally positive reception from music critics, who have praised the way the series depicts the disease and the new styles of music explored by Leyland Kirby. However, other critics felt that the later stages lacked the subtlety presented on the Caretaker's previous releases.

The project became popularized throughout 2020, when several fan-made albums inspired by the series were released, including records made by people whose relatives had died from dementia. In October 2020, it was further popularized as an online challenge on TikTok, with users challenging each other to listen to the project in full due to its long length. While its social media popularity has received negative backlash from some users, due to some of the TikTok users implementing creepypasta elements to the record; Kirby considered it would be good for young people to have empathy for Alzheimer's patients. The series' official YouTube upload view rate has been increasing exponentially since the album's popularity in 2020, reaching 10 million views in April 2021.

Background

"What’s the appeal of these records anyway?"

It’s ghost-like, isn’t it? That period between the ‘30s and ‘40s is between wars. And a lot of people had went to wars and never come back so there was a lot of uncertainty. It’s about ghosts, loss, and all these incredible lyrics. The weight of these tracks is incredible sometimes. Like one of the main guys I’ve sampled over the years, Al Bowlly, died in the war because a bomb landed on the house he was in. They say he would have been bigger than Bing Crosby, that he had a better voice. It’s very sad.

Leyland Kirby on interview with Bandcamp Daily

The Caretaker was a musical project created by English electronic musician James Leyland Kirby that sampled various vinyl songs from the 1920s to the 1940s. The pseudonym's initial albums were mainly inspired by the scene of the haunted ballroom from the horror film The Shining, with the project being named after one of the characters in the movie. The project's debut album Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom features the most noticeable influence from the movie. Kirby expanded this concept by implementing themes of memory loss on his 2005 release of Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, a compilation of 72 .mp3 files exploring the disease of the album title sampling Mantovani. The 2008 release Persistent Repetition of Phrases marked Kirby's change of record labels, shifting from V/Vm Test Records to History Always Favours the Winners. It also marked a notable change in style from the Caretaker's previous releases, featuring Alzheimer's disease as its main theme rather than amnesia.

In 2011, the Caretaker released An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, a record based on a 2010 study about how music may have a therapeutic effect in making Alzheimer's patients remember new information that is presented to them, even when compared to people who do not have the disease. It had gained attention from critics at the time, being named the 14th best ambient album of all time by music website Pitchfork; In an interview with Andrew Parks of music platform Bandcamp, the musician stated that, even though he initially did not want to produce another Caretaker record, the reception An Empty Bliss had gained inspired Kirby to release an entire series of albums expanding its concept, as he now had a larger audience to which he could expand the record's themes upon.

Concept, composition, and production

The complete edition of Everywhere at the End of Time is divided into six individual albums, titled "stages," which depict the various stages and symptoms of a form of dementia, being most likely Alzheimer's disease. Interviewed by Landon Bates of magazine The Believer, Kirby described the first three stages as having "subtle but crucial differences, based on the mood and the awareness that a person with the condition would feel," adding that the final three stages "had to be made from the viewpoint of post-awareness;" while each composition in the first three stages features a single sample changed through pitch changes, reverberation, looping, crackle and physical degradation, those on the latter three feature multiple samples woven together in a sound collage format which Kirby has likened to John Cage's usage of chance in music. The sound in the later stages is constructed from radical manipulations of samples which had previously appeared in Stages 1–3 or in other Caretaker releases; in making Stages 4 and 5, Kirby claimed that he had over 200 hours worth of music and "compiled it based on mood" "using cutting-edge digital technology." Stage 6 consists of drones and dark ambient sounds as well as a choral recording within the last six minutes to mark the patient experiencing terminal lucidity and death, respectively.

On an interview with John Doran from online magazine The Quietus, Kirby stated that, for the first three stages, one of his "strategies" has been to use different versions of the same samples in order to achieve certain emotional messages with each different version of that sample; while the sample of the first track from the first stage has been described by Kirby as upbeat, the third track from the second stage, which uses the same sample but a different cover of it, has been described by him as "somehow sounding low." The musician further revealed that the first three stages can be listened "on shuffle," due to their differences being subtle, as his intention with the first albums was to make them contain interchangeable tracks. While Kirby has said multiple times he would be more focused on producing the last three stages, he added on an interview with Daniel Melfi from Electronic Beats that the first three are still "essential" to the series, as they provide the context to the latter stages.

On a video interview with Alexandre Bazin, Kirby revealed that the sound collages of the latter stages required large amounts of computing power, adding that the background noise effects had to sound organic, in order for the listener to "not know the process but know things are falling apart." The musician further revealed one of the biggest challenges he had while producing the last stages was selecting what were "the best 40 or 50 minutes" to include of what he claimed to be over 250 hours of recordings, further noticing that Stages 4 and 5 were not how he had expected them to be, as he tried to create a "listenable chaos." Kirby called the last three albums the "stages of diminishing returns," as he'd expect his audience who enjoyed his previous albums to not like them.

Stage 1

Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 1
Beaten Frowns After
Studio album by the Caretaker
Released	22 September 2016 (2016 -09-22)
Genre	Ambient big band dark ambient electronic hauntology jazz plunderphonics
Length	41:31
the Caretaker chronology
Patience (After Sebald) (2012) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 1 (2016) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 2 (2017)

"Here we experience the first signs of memory loss.
This stage is most like a beautiful daydream.
The glory of old age and recollection.
The last of the great days."

— Leyland Kirby

Stage 1 is the eleventh studio album by the Caretaker. Akin to An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, it consists of the first seconds from several vinyl records from the 1920s slowed down and played in loop for long periods of time. This stage presents twelve tracks, with six tracks occupying vinyl sides A and B. Track titles are light and generally suggest a style of positivity, with names such as "Late afternoon drifting," "Childishly fresh eyes," and "The loves of my entire life." It mostly presents clearly audible music, featuring a background vinyl crackle sound effect. Pat Padua from online magazine Spectrum Culture described the first stage to be "a surreal version" of the TV show Name That Tune. Brian Howe from music website Pitchfork likened its sound to Kirby not doing much manipulation to the samples, when "in fact, he is drastically altering tiny snippets and composing them into smeared but credible pieces." However, interviewed by John Doran, Kirby revealed the only methods of alteration he has done to the samples were adding reverb and looping sections to create longer pieces, as well as emphasizing the existing vinyl crackle in the mix; in making the first stage, Kirby noticed he wanted the mastering process, as done by LUPO, to be "really rich, really big, really consistent sounding all the way through".

The opening track of Stage 1, "It's just a burning memory," samples Al Bowlly's "Heartaches," a track that reappears multiple times throughout the series. Kirby described the track as "very upbeat, nice and really warm." Track A4, "Childishly fresh eyes," has been noticed by Padua as suggesting "barely remembered, superficially soothing elevator music." While Pat Beane from music website Tiny Mix Tapes wrote that the repeating melody of track A4 has a "splendor" to it, it was "unsteady" when combined with the piano presented on the following track, "Slightly bewildered," a track also described by Brian Howe as presenting an "almost toneless mooing;" it presents a pianist performing but, as suggested by Padua, "just not getting it right," making the track "mildly disorienting." However, Howe praised the "inner humming voice" from the next track "Things that are beautiful and transient." Songs from side B, such as track B2, "An autumnal equinox," and track B4, "The loves of my entire life," have been described by Howe as possessing "a winning gentleness." Howe has added, however, that "by the end, even gentleness has taken on a desperate tinge, as though if the dancing stops, everyone dies." The record ends with, as described by Beane, "melodramatic swells" found on track B6, "My heart will stop in joy," which ends the album with an echoing horn section described by Padua as having a sound similar to "the pinnacle of big band ballroom romance."

The album cover, titled Beaten Frowns After, depicts a stationary unravelling grey paper scroll resting on a blue gradient horizon. Pat Beane likened the object to the creases of the brain, the gyri and sulci, adding that it "seems petrified as a statue, stuck in the pose of discomposure, without revealing anything of its history," and that its simpleness forebodes the tracks of the album, which were considered "brilliant" by him.

Stage 2

Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 2
An abstract flower pot held by two faceless humanoid figures. Pittor Pickgown in Khatheinstersper
Studio album by the Caretaker
Released	6 April 2017 (2017 -04-06)
Genre	Ambient big band dark ambient drone electronic experimental hauntology jazz plunderphonics
Length	41:55
the Caretaker chronology
Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 1 (2016) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 2 (2017) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 3 (2017)

"The second stage is the self realisation and awareness that something is wrong with a refusal to accept that. More effort is made to remember so memories can be more long form with a little more deterioration in quality. The overall personal mood is generally lower than the first stage and at a point before confusion starts setting in."

— Leyland Kirby

Stage 2 is the twelfth studio album by the Caretaker. It features a much more melancholic tone than Stage 1. This stage presents ten tracks, with five tracks occupying vinyl sides C and D.Its track titles present more somber themes, with names such as "A losing battle is raging," "Surrendering to despair," and "The way ahead feels lonely," which Holly Hazelwood noticed as making listeners realize they are "powerless to stop it." Writing for German music magazine Betreutes Proggen, Benjamin Feiner likened the second stage to be "a slowly diverging version of the first stage," adding that, while the sound is "losing its strength," its melodies are still clearly audible. Interviewed by John Doran, Kirby described the "switch" between the first and second album, specifically noting that instead of looping short sections of sampled material as with the first stage, he would let tracks play in full while stripping certain sections away, not necessarily composing them of only small loops.

The opening track of Stage 2, "A losing battle is raging," features a more drone-inspired style which has been compared by Hazelwood of Spectrum Culture to electronic music duo Boards of Canada, with the writer adding that its sound, instead of conveying gentleness, is "cloaked in heavy sorrow." It presents a much larger amount of reverberation than the songs of the first stage. Track C3, "What does it matter how my heart breaks," features a different cover "Heartaches" as its sample, one done by Seger Ellis. It is the same sample as "It's just a burning memory", but a different version of it. The track's pitch is much lower than its Stage 1 counterpart, being described by Hazelwood as "plagued with lethargy." Hazelwood noticed that track C4, "Glimpses of hope in trying times," presents "a building dread loom[ing] large and unavoidable." The combination of track D3, "Last moments of pure recall" with track D4, "Denial unravelling" has been hypothesized by Hazelwood to be the patient no longer having the ability to pretend that they are well. The record ends with "The way ahead feels lonely," a track described by Feiner as being the last "pleasant part" of Everywhere at the End of Time.

The album cover, titled Pittor Pickgown in Khatheinstersper, depicts an abstract vase with four flowers inside, with the lower section of the vase featuring two dancing sculptures of faceless humanoid figures, one male and one female. Frank Falisi from Tiny Mix Tapes wrote that, while the scroll presented in the album art of Stage 1 was a reminder that "the only thing behind our bodies is us," the album cover for Stage 2 is what is presented when the scroll becomes unfurled, adding that "the only things behind our bodies are pretty flowers from a rotten rock."

Stage 3

Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 3
File:The Caretaker - Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 3 cover.jpg Hag
Studio album by the Caretaker
Released	28 September 2017 (2017 -09-28)
Genre	Ambient big band dark ambient drone electronic experimental hauntology jazz modern classical plunderphonics
Length	45:36
the Caretaker chronology
Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 2 (2017) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 3 (2017) Take Care, It's a Desert Out There... (2017)

"Here we are presented with some of the last coherent memories before confusion fully rolls in and the grey mists form and fade away. Finest moments have been remembered, the musical flow in places is more confused and tangled. As we progress some singular memories become more disturbed, isolated, broken and distant. These are the last embers of awareness before we enter the post awareness stages."

— Leyland Kirby

Stage 3 is the thirteenth studio album by the Caretaker. It is the final stage in which samples are recognizable as their original melodies, before the sound collages of the Post-Awareness stages. This stage presents sixteen tracks, with eight tracks occupying vinyl sides E and F. Some songs from An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, such as "Libet's delay" and the record's title track, return in Stage 3, although some writers described them as sounding like they come from a body of water. This record has been noticed by Kirby as the most similar sonically to An Empty Bliss, for featuring many samples which have been taken from the entire alias' history. Some tracks of this stage end more abruptly than in other albums. Track titles on Stage 3, such as "Hidden sea buried deep," "To the minimal great hidden," and "Burning despair does ache," are more abstract, causing Holly Hazelwood to describe them as "full of foreboding." They are mixed phrasings of track titles from the Caretaker's previous albums; an example is the track "Hidden sea buried deep," which takes its title from "The great hidden sea of the unconscious" and "Bedded deep in long term memory" of An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, the Caretaker's breakthrough album. This was hypothesized by Benjamin Feiner to be the project "struggling against its own disintegration."

Track E1, "Back there Benjamin," has been described by Beach Sloth from online magazine Entropy as featuring a "bled-dry jaunt" to it; Track E2, "And heart breaks," is the last coherent version of "Heartaches," presenting its elements collapsing, as its horns are closer to radio static. The melody of track E6 has been hypothesized by Sloth to be Kirby deliberately confusing its original sample, "letting it become lost, impossible to truly focus [on]." Track E8 however, "Long term dusk glimpses," has been described by Sloth as the "true heart" of the record, for presenting a melody that seemingly fights the memory loss, "at times becoming defiant against its doomed fate." Track F2, "Drifting time misplaced," features its background noise becoming more and less apparent as the track progresses, before eventually presenting only vinyl crackle in its last 25 seconds; tracks F4 and F8, "Burning despair does ache" and "Mournful cameraderie" respectively, are more distorted versions of Seger Ellis's "Heartaches," with the latter featuring a droning effect.

The album cover, titled Hag, was described by Sam Goldner from Tiny Mix Tapes to also be a vase, however "spilling out into ripples of disorder."

Stage 4

Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 4
A bust of a female figure composed of a blue and green material, seemingly facing away from the observer. Giltsholder
Studio album by the Caretaker
Released	5 April 2018 (2018 -04-05)
Genre	Ambient dark ambient drone electronic experimental noise plunderphonics sound collage
Length	87:21
the Caretaker chronology
Take Care, It's a Desert Out There... (2017) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 4 (2018) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 5 (2018)

"Post-Awareness Stage 4 is where serenity and the ability to recall singular memories gives way to confusions and horror. It's the beginning of an eventual process where all memories begin to become more fluid through entanglements, repetition and rupture."

— Leyland Kirby

Stage 4 is the fifteenth studio album by the Caretaker, the fourteenth being the Mark Fisher tribute album Take Care, It's a Desert Out There... Its compositional aspects are more similar to those of noise music, contrary to the first three stages which featured the same style of the Caretaker's previous releases. It marks the beginning of the Post-Awareness stages, where individual tracks are not short and taken from one sample but rather 20 minutes long and featuring changing sections. In an interview with The Believer, Kirby coined the term "Post-Awareness" as the stages where a patient is unaware of their dementia, a term already known as anosognosia. The tracks occupy whole vinyl sides and present more medical terms, presenting clinical names on its tracks: three of them (tracks G1, H1, and J1) titled "Post Awareness Confusions" and one of them (track I1) titled "Temporary Bliss State."

The "Post Awareness Confusions" tracks feature distorted snippets of instruments from either the previous stages of the project or from Kirby's previous releases as the Caretaker. A part of them samples Russ Morgan's "Goodnight, My Beautiful" and adds heavy glitch and distortion effects to it, which makes the original sample nearly unrecognizable. According to Miles Bowe from Pitchfork, they capture the "darkest, most damaged" noises of the entire series, either by "dwelling on one ghostly sample" for long periods of time or by "violently accelerating through skipping melodies." Holly Hazelwood interpreted the sound of the tracks as the noise of an AM radio permanently stuck between two different stations. These tracks reconfigure the Caretaker's signature horn samples to their limit; according to Sam Goldner, while noise was presented in previous Caretaker releases simply as a background effect, these tracks feature it becoming the music's "primary driving force, pushing the pieces in all directions at once with vivid, cacophonous force."

On track G1, a panning version of "Heartaches" is eventually presented, being described by Feiner as the music fighting its way to the surface of "a mercilessly confusing flow of sound." Track H1 features a section dubbed as the "Hell Sirens," as it presents a horn sample distorted to the point where, as Hazelwood wrote, "it sounds like an alarm from the deepest pits of Hell, representing one of the most horrifying moments of the series." Feiner specifically gave a "special warning" about the "Hell Sirens," continuing with "Don't listen in the dark!" Track J1 presents an abrupt ending that, in the words of Bowe, makes the record "devastating." Hazelwood analyzed that, since track J1 is presented after track I1, "Temporary Bliss State," it is a way to "punish the subject for having escaped for as long as they did."

The album's tone becomes less melancholic when track I1, "Temporary Bliss State," plays; while still incoherent, it presents a much less harsh sound when compared to the first two tracks. Within it, Kirby leaves no trace of the ballroom samples that are usually associated with the series but instead warps its source material into, as Bowe described, "pure ethereal abstraction;" while the critic stated that the "Confusions" tracks reach "unexplored extremes" for the Caretaker, the "dreamlike" aspects of I1 were described by him as even more disorienting than any of the "Confusions" tracks, yet being "so beautiful it barely sounds like the Caretaker at all." Hazelwood wrote that the track is meant to be treasured since, "as the title makes clear, it’s temporary."

The album cover, titled Giltsholder., is the first one to depict a human shape, as opposed to the previous artworks that mainly presented simple objects. It features the bust of a female figure composed of a blue and green material, which is seemingly facing away from the observer. Sam Goldner wrote that the human form is presented "in the ashes of this dissolution," adding that "from the heart of death, a new life emerges, albeit one whose face we can’t see;" the writer further stated the human in the cover seems to be smiling when looked at from a distance.

Stage 5

Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 5
A highly distorted, vaguely humanoid figure descending through a white staircase. Eptitranxisticemestionscers Desending
Studio album by the Caretaker
Released	20 September 2018 (2018 -09-20)
Genre	Ambient dark ambient drone electronic experimental jazz noise plunderphonics
Length	88:21
the Caretaker chronology
Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 4 (2018) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 5 (2018) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 6 (2019)

"Post-Awareness Stage 5 confusions and horror.
More extreme entanglements, repetition and rupture can give way to
calmer moments. The unfamiliar may sound and feel familiar.
Time is often spent only in the moment leading to isolation."

— Leyland Kirby

Stage 5 is the sixteenth studio album by the Caretaker. It further expands its noise music genre influence, with Holly Hazelwood noticing its similarity to musicians of the genre such as Merzbow. It is the longest stage of the series, featuring 88 minutes of, as Benjamin Feiner wrote, "general anxiety, confusion and fear, joined by a progressive dulling and a loss of sense of time." This stage presents more medical terms within its track titles, such as "Advanced plaque entanglements." Frank Falisi from Tiny Mix Tapes felt it completely abandoned the "comfort" of the Caretaker's previous releases, presenting the complete "diseaseness" of dementia rather than only suggesting it. Holly Hazelwood described it as the most "agonizing, emotionally devastating" stage of the entire project, due to the melody "ceas[ing] to matter." Featuring a more tense style than its predecessors, Frank Falisi wrote of it as "an anxious flirtation with how we make sense of noise," as the Caretaker's source material from the first three stages starts to "recede not only to a distant whisper, but farther still, passed knowing." It features a large amount of layers of samples woven together, which makes them, according to Hazelwood, serve no purpose but to pile upon each other, representing "an auditory traffic jam."

Track K1, "Advanced plaque entanglements," presents a segment with recognizable dialogue; its last three minutes feature the distorted voice of a man's announcement to a mandolin solo, followed by a relatively clear mandolin melody. Track L1, titled "Advanced plaque entanglements," has been described by Holly Hazelwood as a challenge where the listener tries to "find comfort in the mechanical pulse that marches on through the ambient horror we traverse." Track M1, "Synapse retrogenesis," takes its title from synapses and, most notably, retrogenesis, a hypothesis that suggests an Alzheimer's disease patient deals with the reverse neural development of an infant, which Hazelwood further described as having an inhumanity to it. Hazelwood described the ending track, "Sudden time regression into isolation," as making listeners "begin to wish they could decipher the chaos again."

The album cover, titled Eptitranxisticemestionscers Desending,, is the most abstract artwork of the entire series; it depicts a highly distorted, vaguely humanoid ballerina descending through a staircase. However, Hazelwood claimed it presents a "cancerous mass blooming out of a marble staircase," adding it symbolizes the patient's mind being "a remnant of a once-grand world, almost entirely unrecognizable."

Stage 6

Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 6
An empty canvas with four strips of blue painter's tape, resting at a lime gradient horizon. Necrotomigaud
Studio album by the Caretaker
Released	14 March 2019 (2019 -03-14)
Genre	Ambient choral drone electronic experimental noise plunderphonics
Length	85:58
the Caretaker chronology
Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 5 (2018) Everywhere at the End of Time - Stage 6 (2019) Everywhere, an Empty Bliss (2019)

"Post-Awareness Stage 6 is without description."

— Leyland Kirby

Stage 6 is the seventeenth studio album by the Caretaker. It mainly consists of deep static ambient noises; while Stages 4 and 5 mainly presented harsh noise, symbolizing the suffering of the patient, Stage 6 mainly features, as Frank Falisi suggested, the Caretaker "taking us inside the last throes This is music gasped. It is hard to stomach." It presents no detail whatsoever, which Holly Hazelwood has likened to the movement of a slow glacier, with the writer further writing that, while the previous stages made listeners "feel something – joy, despair, camaraderie – here, the memories are incapable of articulation." In contrast to the clinical titles of the tracks of Stages 4 and 5, those of Stage 6, such as "A brutal bliss beyond this empty defeat," present more emotional statements. Benjamin Feiner likened the sound of this stage to slowly sinking to a deep body of water.

The opening track, "A confusion so thick you forget forgetting," was noticed by Andrew Ryce from music website Resident Advisor due to presenting "foreboding" drones in its composition, described by online magazine The Quietus as a "billowing fog of noise and raining hiss." It does not present any recognizable part of the Caretaker's "established sound," but instead, features a "vast, cavernous, and upsetting" production, described by Frank Falisi from Tiny Mix Tapes as "the void space around spent electric, the hot of last energy." Track P1, "A brutal bliss beyond this empty defeat," was hypothesized by Ryce to be seemingly designed to "drive the listener to madness," due to its composition of repetitive noises and discordant notes; as Falisi hypothesized, it is "the powder after bone ground on bone." The Quietus further described track P1 as an ambient sound that symbolizes panic; while Stages 4 and 5 still featured brief flashes of instruments, P1 presents "echoes of anxiety," an enhancement of the "wholly peculiar and paradoxical nature of what you’re hearing." Track Q1, "Long decline is over," features snatches of music hidden by obfuscating layers of static noise, where the music remains, as Ryce wrote, "frustratingly" out of reach: "at times you can sense it's there, but it's impossible to make out."

The final track of the album, "Place in the World fades away," initially presents the same droning sounds featured in this stage, but eventually, a sustained droning note on an organ begins to play, which The Quietus described as something trying to break through. After some time, the organ abruptly cuts out to the sound of a vinyl needle hitting a record, six minutes before the ending of the album. The last six minutes present the style and coherence usually associated with the first three stages of the project, featuring a clear piano choral from, as The Quietus wrote, an extremely degraded vinyl record: "shocking at first, barren, elegiac, but crushingly sad, hopeless, final." The entire series ends with a singular minute of silence, representing the end of the Caretaker alias and symbolizing the death of an Alzheimer's disease patient, as one minute of silence is usually the mandatory default time for paying respects to a dead individual or a group of individuals.

Some writers have described an emotional response when listening to the final segment of the project, along with several interpretations being formed surrounding the last minutes of the album, due to it being an unexpected moment where music returns after a long time of static noise. The most accepted hypothesis is that the moment is a representation of terminal lucidity, a rare phenomenon where dementia patients suddenly regain their memory hours before death. Other interpretations include the last six minutes being the soul of the patient moving on to the afterlife, which Falisi reinforced as listeners "don’t have to believe in anything to think there might be sounds beyond our being." However, Ryce suggested that what is being portrayed might be "a kind of oblivion," concluding that "as the music fades into nothing, the listener is left to reckon with what Alzheimer's wreaks on all of its victims."

The album cover, titled Necrotomigaud, is generally thought to be a depiction of an empty canvas or the back of a picture frame with four strips of blue painter's tape, being described by Ryce as "meaningless and flattening."

Artwork and packaging

File:Ivan Seal on the FRAC Auvergne.png

Ivan Seal on his FRAC Auvergne exhibition. It has been suggested that Kirby and Seal's visions have overlapped significantly.

The album covers for Everywhere at the End of Time are oil paintings created by Kirby's long-time friend Ivan Seal. They are minimalist and abstract in their styles, often presenting a single object in a featureless room with no text getting more abstract as each stage progresses. When asked why the album covers and packaging did not present track listings, liner notes, or even the name "The Caretaker," Leyland Kirby stated Seal's paintings for the individual albums are "so important to each stage," adding that his name or text there is "unimportant," and that he's "honored" Seal lets him use his works as covers; the musician further wrote that they are "trying to not spoil the works so much with over-elaborate notes and text," concluding that, by having no text at all on the covers, there is a higher allowance of "space for personal interpretation."

Several writers and music critics have praised the album covers of Everywhere at the End of Time, due to their abstract style. Holly Hazelwood described the "remarkable" art, as well as the song titles, as "integral" to the narrative of the record. Writing for German music magazine Betreutes Proggen, Benjamin Feiner complimented the paintings, due to their representations of everyday objects being seemingly "melted together," praising Seal's work with the Caretaker's music seems to fit so well with each other, as they "fertilize and compliment each other, are made for each other." Italian news website CyberDude wrote of the album covers as reflecting dementia, as they initially appear to be easily recognizable objects, such as a book on Stage 1, a vase and flowers on Stage 2, and the face of a woman on Stage 4; however, are further presented as unrecognizable when paying attention.

Ivan Seal's art and the Caretaker's music were the subject of a French art exhibition done in 2019 by the FRAC Auvergne, featuring music from Everywhere at the End of Time along with an altered CD edition of Everywhere, an Empty Bliss and a book featuring Seal's art. In the exhibition's description, it was revealed that both artists have similar visions: while Kirby presents music that surrounds themes of the failings of memory, Seal paints objects based on distant memories from his childhood. Writing of another exhibition in an abandoned 14th century building in Poland by both artists, ARTnews contributor Andy Battaglia further suggested that:

"[Ivan] Seal and the Caretaker have a history. Both are from England and spent time together in Berlin, and they collaborated on a number of record covers for a project that just wrapped up with a six-album series devoted to thinking through memory loss and dementia. Music by the Caretaker (whose name is a nod to a spectral character in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film The Shining) tends toward technologically altered reminiscences of the old-fashioned, with sounds of vintage ballroom waltzes and parlor tunes from 1930s-era 78-rpm records edited and processed into simultaneously straightforward and ghostly lull. And paintings by Seal tend toward the uncanny, with a representational simplicity locked in a tense duel with a habit for seeming to always be silently thinking out loud. Together, their work in different mediums found a match."

Release

File:Thecaretakerleyland.jpg

Leyland Kirby in 2016. There was confusion towards the Caretaker being "diagnosed with dementia."

Kirby's initial idea for Everywhere at the End of Time was making one recording and degrade it over the course of three years; however, he stated in an interview with online magazine The Quietus that his final idea has been to "give the whole project dementia." Kirby revealed the series' source material would be what he remembered from the project itself, later developing the idea of releasing six albums with a gap of six months between them to give, as wrote by him, "a sense of time passing." On another interview with music platform Bandcamp, Kirby revealed dementia is a modern problem, as populations are usually living longer, however further stating that he isn't worried about it on a personal level; the musician further stated his exploration of the disease through the album is "more of a fascination than a fear," since the brain is still being studied and its destruction is "one of life’s great mysteries."

The first stage of Everywhere at the End of Time was released on 22 September 2016. Kirby revealed the series would be "exploring dementia, its advancement, and its totality," adding each stage would "reveal new points of progression, loss and disintegration. Progressively falling further and further towards the abyss of complete memory loss and nothingness." He later stated in an email to music website Pitchfork that he himself did not have dementia; only the project did. This has caused some confusion within magazine The Fader, which mistakenly writed a news article stating Kirby had been diagnosed with early-onset dementia; writing for Pitchfork, Kirby stated there shouldn't be any confusion and "it's not intentional if there is any," adding that ending the project by "giving it dementia" would be "a fitting epitaph for a finite series of works which has always dealt with memory."

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Betreutes Proggen	15/15
Pitchfork	7.3/10 (Stage 1) 7.9/10 (Stage 4)
Resident Advisor	4.3/5 (Stage 6)
Sputnikmusic	(Stage 4)
Tiny Mix Tapes	(Stage 1) (Stage 2) (Stage 4) (Stage 5) (Stage 6)

The first three stages of Everywhere at the End of Time were received with mild positivity from critics. Brian Howe from music website Pitchfork expressed concern about whether the series would be romanticizing the concept of dementia, explaining his personal experience with the disease was "very little like a 'beautiful daydream.' In fact, there was nothing aesthetic about it." Pat Beane from music website Tiny Mix Tapes felt the first stage doesn't "conjure any specific memories," but rather "induces the feeling of remembering" itself, writing this is due to "the unsettling power of the Caretaker's cozying dissociative work;" however, Frank Falisi's review of Stage 2 stated the record is not a general depiction of the disease, but rather the Caretaker's process through it, adding the album is "a collage, a manipulation, a piece no more penetrating than an erudite sermon or a well-knead sonnet or the original gramophone 78s that backbone it." Writing of Stage 3, Beach Sloth from online magazine Entropy called it the most intriguing of the first three stages, as it "avoids the desire to simply explore the pure physical decay of the compositions, differentiating it from William Basinski’s output;" however, further considering that this is due to the Caretaker opting for a "more direct, less intellectualized approach."

The last three stages were more positively received by critics. Also writing for Pitchfork, Miles Bowe argued Stage 4 became much more empathetic, as it did not present the aestheticized style of the first stage, but rather "only confusion, terror, and tragedy," concluding the risk of "pale romanticization" was avoided here. Sam Goldner considered Stage 4 as the most "immersive, unsettling album" by the Caretaker since An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, due to the record "breaking the loop;" however, writing of Goldner's affirmation, Frank Falisi suggested that Stage 5, then, is the loop "unspooling (endlessly) off the capstans and piling up until new shapes form." On his review of Stage 6 for music website Resident Advisor, Andrew Ryce described the long length of the project as lending it "a unique force," adding that Everywhere at the End of Time makes an attempt at "blurring the boundary between music and sound art."

The complete edition of Everywhere at the End of Time received further praise from music critics. Except for Stage 3, Tiny Mix Tapes reviewed each album individually and gave the "EUREKA!" award to Stages 1, 4, and 6, writing they "defy categorization and explore the constructed boundaries between 'music' and 'noise,'" further adding each one of them is "worthy of careful consideration." Writer Benjamin Feiner, who gave a perfect score to the album on his review for German magazine Betreutes Proggen, called the series "a moving experience, an album cycle that has more in common with an art performance than with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, concluding that Kirby does not "screw up" the original samples but rather "buries them with honor, and thus unites the past and the future in an impressive way."

Contrary to Bowe's opinion that Stage 4 improved on the Caretaker's style, Winesburgohio from Sputnikmusic felt that "the more obviously unsettling one [Kirby] renders their music, the less haunting and affecting it is," stating the album tried to be affecting and failed in doing so. The reviewer added that the reaction was due to three main reasons: the first one being that the listener "can feel the creator beyond the music, pulling the strings, desperate to elicit a desired reaction," the second one being that Kirby's previous records were disorienting in ways difficult to locate, whereas Stage 4 is "a landscape of post-apocalyptic drones and cheesy radio interjections," and the third one being that Stage 4 focuses only on personal memory, whereas the Caretaker's previous releases combined the concept with cultural memory.

Internet phenomenon

On October 2017, Memories Overlooked was released, a hundred-track album where a large number of vaporwave musicians, some of which have had relatives suffering with dementia, paid tribute to the Caretaker; it was later revealed that all of the digital proceeds from the album would be donated to the Alzheimer's Association. Other slightly less notable attempts at re-creating the record include one that uses the music of Minecraft, one that uses more modern records rather than big band records, and one re-created by a teen who has a grandmother that is a dementia patient.

In October 2020, the series gained further attention from TikTok users, who challenged each other to listen to the work in full due to its long length. This has triggered some negative backlash from other users, who felt the album being turned into a test of endurance could possibly offend dementia patients and their relatives; however, on an interview with The New York Times, Kirby stated that, by being turned into an online challenge, the record proves the "need for shared experiences which goes hand in hand with modern social media tropes," adding that anything that might raise awareness about Alzheimer's disease and dementia is a good thing, "especially among the young." The official YouTube upload of the album by Kirby has accumulated over 10 million views as of April 2021.

Joseph Earp from Junkee stated the bigger problem were fictional stories about the album being shared on the platform, such as claims that the record can be used to make dementia patients remember. Various creepypasta-like stories have been invented on the internet in regards to the series, with some of the TikTok users stating the record causes its listeners to experience symptoms of dementia themselves. Meaghan Garvey from NPR hypothesized this might have been due to a viral video uploaded by YouTuber A Bucked Of Jake titling Everywhere at the End of Time "the darkest album I have ever heard," with a thumbnail presenting the stylised phrase "THIS ALBUM WILL BREAK YOU;" however, Garvey further opposed the negative backlash to these kinds of comments, stating these reactions are not surprising as introductions to experimental music often cause emotional effects to its listeners.

When asked by Patrick Clarke from online magazine The Quietus whether he had noticed his record had gained attention on social media, Kirby stated he had noticed its official YouTube upload view rate had been increasing exponentially, adding that the record being turned into a TikTok challenge would also be good for him, as "the hardest thing for any independent work to attain is its visibility." On a year-end report listing of music popularized by TikTok presented by the Variety magazine, Everywhere at the End of Time was included in the section "Unexpected Hits and Niche Discoveries," whereby "TikTok's community helped shape internet and IRL culture with these unearthed gems." Brian Browne, the president of Dementia Care Education, concluded Kirby "really was onto something in terms of being able to — through the medium of music — lead a younger generation on a journey through the sounds of what the brain is going through, through a dementing process," adding the record is "a much welcome thing, because it produces the empathy that’s needed."

Track listing

All track listings and lengths adapted from Bandcamp.

Stage 1 track listing

No.	Title	Length
1.	"A1 - It's just a burning memory"	3:32
2.	"A2 - We don't have many days"	3:30
3.	"A3 - Late afternoon drifting"	3:35
4.	"A4 - Childishly fresh eyes"	2:58
5.	"A5 - Slightly bewildered"	2:01
6.	"A6 - Things that are beautiful and transient"	4:34
7.	"B1 - All that follows is true"	3:31
8.	"B2 - An autumnal equinox"	2:46
9.	"B3 - Quiet internal rebellions"	3:30
10.	"B4 - The loves of my entire life"	4:04
11.	"B5 - Into each others eyes"	4:36
12.	"B6 - My heart will stop in joy"	2:41
Total length:		41:31

Stage 2 track listing

No.	Title	Length
13.	"C1 - A losing battle is raging"	4:37
14.	"C2 - Misplaced in time"	4:42
15.	"C3 - What does it matter how my heart breaks"	2:37
16.	"C4 - Glimpses of hope in trying times"	4:43
17.	"C5 - Surrendering to despair"	5:03
18.	"D1 - I still feel as though I am me"	4:07
19.	"D2 - Quiet dusk coming early"	3:36
20.	"D3 - Last moments of pure recall"	3:52
21.	"D4 - Denial unravelling"	4:16
22.	"D5 - The way ahead feels lonely"	4:15
Total length:		41:55

Stage 3 track listing

No.	Title	Length
23.	"E1 - Back there Benjamin"	4:14
24.	"E2 - And heart breaks"	4:05
25.	"E3 - Hidden sea buried deep"	1:20
26.	"E4 - Libet's all joyful camaraderie"	3:12
27.	"E5 - To the minimal great hidden"	1:41
28.	"E6 - Sublime beyond loss"	2:10
29.	"E7 - Bewildered in other eyes"	1:51
30.	"E8 - Long term dusk glimpses"	3:33
31.	"F1 - Gradations of arms length"	1:31
32.	"F2 - Drifting time misplaced"	4:15
33.	"F3 - Internal bewildered World"	3:29
34.	"F4 - Burning despair does ache"	2:37
35.	"F5 - Aching cavern without lucidity"	1:19
36.	"F6 - An empty bliss beyond this World"	3:36
37.	"F7 - Libet delay"	3:57
38.	"F8 - Mournful cameraderie"	2:39
Total length:		45:36

Stage 4 track listing

No.	Title	Length
39.	"G1 - Stage 4 Post Awareness Confusions"	22:09
40.	"H1 - Stage 4 Post Awareness Confusions"	21:53
41.	"I1 - Stage 4 Temporary Bliss State"	21:01
42.	"J1 - Stage 4 Post Awareness Confusions"	22:16
Total length:		87:21

Stage 5 track listing

No.	Title	Length
43.	"K1 - Stage 5 Advanced plaque entanglements"	22:35
44.	"L1 - Stage 5 Advanced plaque entanglements"	22:48
45.	"M1 - Stage 5 Synapse retrogenesis"	20:48
46.	"N1 - Stage 5 Sudden time regression into isolation"	22:08
Total length:		88:21

Stage 6 track listing

No.	Title	Length
47.	"O1 - Stage 6 A confusion so thick you forget forgetting"	21:52
48.	"P1 - Stage 6 A brutal bliss beyond this empty defeat"	21:36
49.	"Q1 - Stage 6 Long decline is over"	21:09
50.	"R1 - Place in the World fades away"	21:19
Total length:		85:58

Personnel

Taken from Bandcamp.

• Leyland Kirby – production
• Ivan Seal – covers
• Lupo – mastering

External links

• Everywhere at the End of Time on YouTube
• Official website
• Stages 1-3 at AllMusic
• Stages 4-6 at AllMusic
• Stages 1-3 at Discogs
• Stages 4-6 at Discogs
• Everywhere at the End of Time at MusicBrainz