Everywhere at the End of Time

Everywhere at the End of Time
A grey, unravelling newspaper scroll resting on a blue gradient horizon.
Ivan Seal, Beaten Frowns After, 2016, oil on canvas, cover art for Stage 1
Studio album series by
Released
  • 22 September 2016 (2016-09-22) (Stage 1)
  • 6 April 2017 (Stage 2)
  • 28 September 2017 (Stage 3)
  • 5 April 2018 (Stage 4)
  • 20 September 2018 (Stage 5)
  • 14 March 2019 (Stage 6)
StudioKraków, Poland
Genre
Length390:31 (6:30:31)
LabelHistory Always Favours the Winners
ProducerJames Leyland Kirby
The Caretaker chronology
Extra Patience (After Sebald)
(2012)
Everywhere at the End of Time
(2016–2019)
Everywhere, an Empty Bliss
(2019)

Everywhere at the End of Time[a] is the eleventh recording by the Caretaker, an alias of English electronic musician James Leyland Kirby. Released between 2016 and 2019, its six albums uses degraded samples of ballroom music to portray the stages of Alzheimer's disease. Inspired by the success of An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011), Kirby produced the project in Kraków out of his fascination with the topic, and made it his final release under the alias. He released each record after a six-month period for listeners to feel the passage of time, and used abstract art pieces by his friend Ivan Seal as album covers. The series drew comparisons to the works of musicians William Basinski and Burial, while production of the later albums was influenced by the aleatoric music of avant-gardist composer John Cage.

Everywhere comprises over six hours of music and portrays a range of events in a patient's life, including joy, despair, confusion, horror, isolation and death. Stages 1–3 sample big band music throughout and are the most similar to An Empty Bliss, while Stages 4–6 depart from the Caretaker's older melodic ambient works to form chaotic noise soundscapes. Anonymous visual artist Weirdcore created music videos for the first two stages, which accompanied Kirby's performances. Initially concerned about the project being seen as pretentious, Kirby thought of not creating Everywhere at all, although he spent more time producing it than any of his other releases. Seal's paintings were covered by a French art exhibition named after the Caretaker's Everywhere, an Empty Bliss (2019), a compilation album of scrapped tracks.

As each stage of Everywhere was released, critics felt increasingly positive towards the series, highlighting its length, unusual concept and perceived emotional power. Considered to be Kirby's magnum opus, the project was one of the most praised music releases of the 2010s. During the early 2020s, it became a YouTube and TikTok phenomenon in the form of a listening challenge and recommendation, after which caregivers of people with dementia praised the albums for increasing empathy among younger listeners. The series has since retained status either as a 'dark' project or as a meme in Internet culture, inspiring several similar projects by the Caretaker fanbase. It appeared in a mod for the video game Friday Night Funkin' (2020) and emerged in aesthetic styles such as the analog horror genre, liminal spaces, and the Backrooms.
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