Everywhere at the End of Time

Everywhere at the End of Time
Everywhere at the End of Time
	Cover art for Stage 1 (2016)
Studio album series by the Caretaker
Released	22 September 2016 (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);
Studio	Calyx Mastering, Berlin
Genre	Ambient; avant-garde; dark ambient; electronic; experimental; plunderphonics;
Length	390:31 or 6:30:31
Label	History Always Favours the Winners
Producer	Leyland Kirby
The Caretaker chronology

Everywhere at the End of Time^[a] is the eleventh recording by the Caretaker, an alias of English electronic musician Leyland Kirby. Released between 2016 and 2019, its six studio albums use degrading loops of sampled ballroom music to portray the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Inspired by the success of An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011), Kirby produced Everywhere as his final major work under the alias. The albums were produced in Kraków and released over six-month periods to "give a sense of time passing", with abstract album covers by his friend Ivan Seal. The series drew comparisons to the works of composer William Basinski and electronic musician Burial, while the later stages were influenced by avant-gardist composer John Cage.

The series comprises six hours of music, portraying a range of emotions and characterised by noise throughout. Although the first three stages are similar to An Empty Bliss, the last three depart from Kirby's earlier ambient works. The albums reflect the patient's disorder and death, their feelings, and the phenomenon of terminal lucidity. To promote the series, anonymous visual artist Weirdcore created music videos for the first two stages. At first, concerned about whether the series would seem pretentious, Kirby thought of not creating Everywhere at all, and spent more time producing it than any of his other releases. The album covers received attention from a French art exhibition named after the Caretaker's Everywhere, an Empty Bliss (2019), a compilation of archived songs.

As each stage was released, the series received increasingly positive reviews from critics; its length and dementia-driven concept led many reviewers to feel emotional about the complete edition. Considered to be Kirby's magnum opus, Everywhere was one of the most praised music releases of the 2010s. Caregivers of people with dementia also praised the albums for increasing empathy for patients among younger listeners, although some medics felt the series was too linear. It became an Internet phenomenon in the early 2020s, emerging in TikTok videos as a listening challenge, being transformed into a controversial mod for the video game Friday Night Funkin' (2020), and appearing in internet memes.
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